Are Minorities in Europe ‘Othered’ in the Space between Policy and Academic Research? – A Case Study on Russians in and 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

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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 , 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 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.

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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 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

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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 , 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 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 the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for has branded (Latvia’s case specifically) as “deeply problematic in terms of real or perceived equality and social cohesion” (Council of Europe 2007, 8 / §29). Moreover, the ascension of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia to NATO and the European Union in 2004 indicates a certain political identity and security vector pursued by the successive governments of these three states, which again may not necessarily align with the desires of their ethnic Russian minorities. Of these three Latvia and Estonia have presented as more notable case studies, with Lithuania less so. This is due to simple demographics: ethnic Russians constitute a far more sizable proportion of the population of Latvia and Estonia than they do in Lithuania; perhaps as a result of this greater minority proportion, Latvia and Estonia have historically enacted (from the 1990s until recently) controversial ‘non-’ programs for their Russian inhabitants who either could not or would not become citizens after the collapse of the Soviet Union (De Pommereau 2018; Krohn 2014). ‘Russian’ politics has played a sizable part in wider political discourse in Latvia and Estonia, both in the sense of their relationship with neighboring Russia (Lithuania does not have a direct border with Russia – another reason for lesser attention in this regard) and on an internal civic dialogue between ethnic Russians and their national ethnic-majority counterparts, Latvians and , respectively.

As stated, there is already an array of existing academic literature on investigations into linguistic and political identities and views amongst ethnic Russians in these two countries. Much has been written on new ‘hybrid’ identities, whether concerning linguistic innovations and code-switching (Zabrodskaja 2009) or spatial hybridity cutting across the Russian/Latvian and Russian/Estonian borders, especially in the ‘dual metropole’ of Narva/Ivangorod, on the Estonia/Russia border (Koval 2019). The Russian communities in the Baltic have also been considered part of a wider regional securitization issue (Jæger 2000; Buzan and Waever 2003; Fernandes and Correia 2018), as, in the sceptic’s view, they are plausible soft power targets for Russian state propaganda to turn into a viable ‘fifth column’ (Clemens Jr. 1998, 710). Up until now, the focus of extant literature has been on the setting of these communities within the framework of a national ‘space’ – what are Russian identities and politics within Latvia and Estonia? Less concern has so far been drawn towards Russian identities and politics within the 7

European Union. The EU has been a key overarching feature of the identities and politics of Latvia and Estonia themselves for over two decades now; the same could be said of NATO, by way of security issues. Why should this be the case? It is the view of this paper that at a time of such challenge for the ongoing ‘project’ of the European Union, against the backdrop of an increasingly loud discourse of ‘Europeanization’, that understanding the extent of ‘European feeling’ across the 27 Member States is not just important amongst the ethnic-majorities of (what are predominantly nation-) states, but of minority groups within them also.

This thesis proposes that the Russian communities of Latvia and Estonia have enjoyed – though the word is not used in the ‘positive’ sense here – a unique civic experience in the past 30 years. While there may be parallels to be drawn post-hoc with other Othered minority communities in Europe and across the world, this experience warrants further investigation in its own right, both for academic purposes, and for the sake of bettering the application of civic policy at both national and supra-national levels, for the betterment of the lived experience of these minority communities and their fellow citizens. While professional social survey frameworks do successfully encapsulate a broadly accurate depiction of their researched countries’ demographics through random-probability sampling (when not using more targeted sampling), and minority communities’ views are therefore included in their data findings, the specificities of these voices and lived experiences are often lost behind the wall of wider data in these large survey reports. The theoretical framework of this paper analyses other authors’ presentations of qualitative data regarding resident Russians’ self-reported perceptions of multi-local ‘belonging’ within Latvia and Estonia. Therefore, it is pertinent to first conduct a review of contemporary academic literature on the three core metrics of common identity and outsider- hood that interest this meta-study: Othering, its history and conceptual application; European identity, its history and present development; Russia’s European Otherness and ‘fifth-column’ narratives, with the wider implications for potential regional securitization. This academic literature review is conducted with the specific interests of this paper in mind – thus, while seeking to be comprehensive, it maintains a relevant focus. Before reviewing the literature, for orientation, this paper first presents a brief summary of the themes to be subsequently discussed.

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Thematic Overview This chapter introduces the reader to the factual elements of the themes to be discussed in this paper, and whose literature is to be reviewed in Chapter 2.

1.1 Borders and Others What is a border? Upon its definition, how and where should it be drawn, and for what/whose purpose? The dividing line – real or imagined – between You and I, between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is a fundamental concern of philosophy and politics. The demarcation of borders between individuals and nations have profound consequences for all of us in our day-to-day lived experiences and the diplomatic and military machinations of the states that we live under. The perceived difference between Self and Other constitutes the basis of the formation of personal identity; the publicly accepted line on a map between countries constitutes the basis of nation- and statecraft. These two layers of bordering also have a complex interdependent relationship: since the development of the idea of the nation-state, polities in Europe in particular have drawn their geographic boundaries around the physical contiguous dispersal of their dominant ethnic groups, which in turn has created national identities whereby inhabitants of one country can easily discern the inhabitants of another as somewhat Other. This has been no less true of the European collective mind gazing out past the outer borders of ‘Europe’ – a fluid and elusive concept throughout history – and labelling as Other those living beyond.

The clearest example of spatial Othering to be investigated between Russians living in the Baltic states and Russians living in Russia is the geographical demarcation running between the Russian-majority city of Narva in Estonia, and the Russian-majority city of Ivangorod in Russia: this dividing line is the international border that runs through the Narva river, flowing out to see from the Lake Peipus which saw Alexander Nevsky’s victory on the ice, centuries before (see below). According to Estonian political scientist Eiki Berg (2000, 78) “the Estonian‐ Russian borderland is a relatively fragile, fairly contested and highly politicised arena”.

1.2 Old Border, Old Othering? There is a long history of Othering in the context of the Russian state in its various inceptions and the states that have existed in the Baltic region. In the European Mediaeval Period, or Middle Ages, the land that is now Latvia and Estonia came under the dominion of the Teutonic crusaders, who sought – and were eventually successful in – the Christianization of the then- pagan Lithuanians, Latvians, Latgalians, Livs, and Estonians (Raun 2002). The land was 9 granted to the Livonian Brothers of the Sword, or Livonian Order, an offshoot of the main Teutonic Order, and became referred to officially as Terra Mariana, in honor of the Biblical Mary. This theocratic confederated state then came into conflict with the Russian princedoms, culminating in defeat on frozen Lake Peipus, pitted against Alexander Nevsky at the famous Battle of the Ice (Ледовое побоище in Russian) in 1242 (Nicolle 1996). This Othering was twice demarcated along religious lines: the pagan Baltic tribes were Othered by Catholic Europe until they were ‘civilized’ by the Livonian Crusade, and the Orthodox Russians were then Othered by the crusaders and Christianized Balts and Ests; of course, the same could be said of the reverse in both cases. This tradition of using one’s religion as the benchmark for ‘civilization’ to cast heathens as Other is ancient and widespread (Staszak 2008, 3).

After the disastrous Livonian War (1559-1583), waged in part against the Tsardom of Ivan IV ‘The Terrible’, these territories became annexed, carved up and segmented between Denmark, Sweden, and Poland-Lithuania, before the Russian Empire conquered them all over the course of the eighteenth century, whereby they did not claim their independence as Estonia and Latvia (and Lithuania) until 1918. After a brief period of independence, these three nascent states of the Baltic were annexed again by the Soviet Union, then Nazi , then the Soviet Union again during the Second World War. Henceforth, the Baltic states were occupied by the Soviet Union until they restored their independence in 1991, after a campaign of civil resistance, starting in 1989, known colloquially as the ‘’. During the period of occupation, the Soviet regime forcibly altered the demographics of the Baltic states, initially for strategic economic purposes – such as in Narva (Kattago 2008) – and later as an attempt to stymie nationalist sentiment and prevent the states’ declarations of independence (Clemens Jr. 1998, 715). These waves of dictated migration were the root cause of some civic tension in Latvia and Estonia in the immediate aftermath of independence (Mikeladze 2009, 467; Clemens Jr. 1998, 710). This bilateral relationship between the Latvian, Estonian, and Russian populations (not to mention other minority Baltic groups such as the Latgalians) could feasibly be propounded as an historic example of political Othering.

As potential Other to both the ‘native’ Latvian and Estonian populations, who historically have considered themselves as fully ‘European’ (Kuldkepp 2013; Ilves 1999; Madiot 2005), and to the Russian population of the ‘Motherland’ they left behind, who have a less consistently avowed relationship with being exclusively ‘European’ over ‘Eurasian’ (Morozova 2009, 667), it is both academically intriguing and politically expedient to understand the precise nature of 10 perceived Othering amongst the ethnic Russian populations of the former Terra Mariana, and their understanding of, and potential attachment to, the notion of a ‘European’ identity as modernly understood within the European Union, relative to the populations of their current homeland, and the homeland whence their forebears came.

1.3 The EU and European Identity Numerous scholars have over the years researched possible correlations between personal perceptions of local, regional and national pride(s) and identity with a coterminous pride and identity associated with an idea of ‘Europe’, understood as the European Union. In the wake of the major 2004 expansion of the European Union, when Estonia and Latvia joined as Member States alongside eight other countries, research into ‘European identity’, its meaning and significance, was still unclear. In the words of Bruter (2005, xii): “we do not really know what people mean when they say they fell European … we do not really know why some people say they fell European rather than other” and that there are “contradictory theories” as to whether or not a “mass European identity” had even been formed by that point in time, let alone whether or not it could grow, evolve, and/or be molded by deliberate policy.

One of the key missions of the European Union presently (and historically) is to create and foster a pan-Union sense of ‘European’ identity amongst the citizens of its Member States, and it is undergoing extensive measures to do so. The strength and legitimacy of this identity policy can be measured by its penetration across Member States, both socially and spatially. This is no easy task, given the huge diversity between and within them; minority groups within each country are especially liable/vulnerable to being excluded from the discourse of this common identity. This paper’s research hopes to provide extrapolated relevance for understanding European identity amongst ethnic minorities across the EU, which would be beneficial for understanding and improving EU cultural policy. An example of a community that resides on the ‘periphery’ of the Union in both these senses is that of the Russian-majority Estonian border town of Narva. This paper seeks to theoretically examine the sense of unity and community that the European Commission hopes to achieve, and then practically explore the extent to which this can be measured as successful or unsuccessful in this particular locale. The implications for the findings of this study could potentially be profound: though Narva’s geo-strategic position is arguably unique within the EU and NATO (and this paper’s sociological findings have strategic implications also), the fact that it is a minority-majority community means that the results of this paper can be extrapolated for the application of policy across Member States 11 with similar such communities. Besides, direct comparisons, this study aims to be illuminative by providing new on-the-ground data to an already strong academic field.

As an historical community – or, rather, a grouping of historical communities – whose history is not that deep, with the majority of members and their forebears arriving in the Baltic after 1945, with an extra particular expansion in the 1980s, the Russians of Latvia and Estonia have presented an interesting case to researchers in the field of multifaceted identity. Research in the 1990s (see Kirch, Kirch, and Tuisk 1993) explored Baltic Russians, their identities and sense of allegiances to Russia and/or the new/reborn states they now found themselves in. Research in the early 2000s built upon earlier literature on European identity at the cusp of the 5th expansion of the European Union, of which Latvia and Estonia were a part. However, comparatively less academic attention has performed a cross-analysis of these two particular fields of investigation. Mainstream attention has tended to focus on comparisons of national identity with the supranational identity that ‘Europa’ offers and brings. Though case studies have provided multi-layered analyses at the local and regional, besides national, levels, these are as part of a much larger, broader dataset covering multiple communities across multiple countries. This paper’s research proposes something new.

1.4 Latvia, Estonia, and Narva today Latvia has historically held a relatively more prominent role in the general consciousness of the wider European populace thanks to the economic prowess of Riga. As a major port since the era of the Hanseatic League, the capital city has drawn Baltic Sea trade through Latvia for centuries, enriching the country’s rulers; this is why it was a key concession in any lost imperial war. As a city of the Russian Empire, Riga added to its status as a trade entrepot by becoming a major industrial center, and this newfound wealth and importance brought with it the Art Nouveau architecture for which the city is celebrated today.

Besides Riga, Daugavpils, Latvia’s second-largest city, has a minority-majority demography, with half the population being Russian (Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs 2017). Today, it is a Russian political and cultural stronghold: Daugavpils and its environs were the main bastion of support for Russian being upgraded to official language status in a 2012 referendum (Central Election Commission 2012). Ultimately, the referendum was rejected nationwide, and Russian remains unofficial, and legally considered ‘foreign’ to Latvia. 12

Despite the initial challenges and setbacks brought about by the transition to democracy and barriers to citizenship for many, Russian Latvians have since made progress in establishing political representation, led by the nationally popular pro-Russian minority party Harmony (Latvian: “Saskaņa”; Russian: «Согласие»). One notable recent example has been Nils Ušakovs, the former mayor of Riga, whose tenure and dismissal were not without controversy (Gershkovich 2019).

Estonia is, geographically and economically, on the periphery of ‘Europe’, as understood by the metonym of the European Union. In turn, Narva is, geographically and socially, on the periphery of Estonia, as understood in terms of the nation-state. The inquest of this paper is to establish the extent of penetration of ‘European’ identity to this ‘periphery’ region. If “Europe is an idea”, how is this idea received in a place where a significant proportion of its inhabitants may feel ostracized by wider society and the state, and may not even be citizens of it? Is possession of citizenship a useful indicator of one’s personal sense of European-ness, or is residency more important in subjective perception and ‘European’ self-actualization? Narva presents an intriguing case study in core-periphery modelling at both the level of the nation- state (Estonia) and supranational association (European Union). Estonia’s membership(s) of NATO and the OECD potentially provide(s) additional strata of conceivably ‘Western’ identity; the former is especially relevant in the case of Narva, owing to the city’s oft-discussed militarily strategic position. In Western Europe, ‘Western’ and ‘European’ identity can often casually be referred to as practically synonymous. In Narva, amongst the ethnic Russian population – with or without Estonian citizenship – this paper’s research could plausibly find that these two identities are not considered so synonymous. The most visceral example of civil unrest and inter-ethnic tension in Estonia in the post-Soviet era came in April 2007, during the so-called ‘Bronze Night’ (Estonian: Pronksiöö), when ethnic Russians protested the relocation of a Soviet war memorial in (Ehala 2009; Melchior and Visser 2011; Melchior 2010). In the time leading up to Estonia’s EU accession, both its geography and politics were considered a site of contestation (Berg 2003, 101). More recent literature would seem to suggest that these are still sites of contestation today.

Narva is a border town in the far north-eastern corner of Estonia, in Ida-Viru County, lying directly on the Estonia-Russia border, facing Russia across the Narva river. The city has approximately 55,000 inhabitants, and this number is decreasing year-on-year. This is a reflection of many post-Soviet non-capital cities, as death rates exceed birth rates and the 13 provinces experience a youth brain drain to either the national capitals or abroad. The population of Narva is approximately 80% ethnically Russian. According to estimates from the city’s Population Registration Office (Estonian: Narva Linnavalitsuse Elanikkonna Registreerimise Büroo), approximately 46.67% of the population in Narva were in that year registered as Estonian citizens, 36.34% were Russian citizens, while 15.26% were of undefined citizenship (Narva Department for Development and Economy 2013, 9). This demographic profile means that some Narva residents are legally able to cross the river without a visa requirement, while others are able to travel the Schengen area visa-free. Considering this particular demographic profile, and with Estonia being a member of NATO since 2004, Narva has been considered by some as a potential site of strategic tension and conflict between Russia and the bloc. As such, the city has in recent years (post-2014) garnered attention from journalists, seeking eye-catching headlines akin to ‘The Next Crimea?’ (Berman 2014; Trimbach and O’Lear 2015; Grigas 2014). Narva has been selected specifically as the thematic subject of this paper’s literature review as it – along with Ivangorod just across the river – is the settlement in the Baltic region that is most emblematic of the divide between Russia and ‘the West’, between the Russian state and a non-Russian state, between Europe in the EU, and Europe outside of it – it is the site most symbolic of This Side and That Side, Us and Them, Self and Other.

“Estonia is your home because you were born here. But Russia is your fatherland.” (Gnauck 2017, quoting a resident of Narva)

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Literature Review Where, and what, is Europe? It is a question that has been pondered by thinkers of various academic persuasions for millennia, with a tradition going back to the philosophers of Ancient Greece. It is a question pertinent to geography, anthropology, and political identity. The delineation of the borders of Europe is important in both its physical (political) and mental (culturally perceived) manifestations. The definition of where Europe ends and Asia begins has been culturally and strategically important in the history of the Russian state in its various guises over centuries – as Tsardom, Empire, Republic of the Soviet Union, and Federation. Debate over whether the Russian civilization is European, Asian, or Eurasian in nature has being fiercely contested both within Russia and without, by ethnic Russians and non-Russians alike. There has emerged another, more recent debate around the nature of Europe and European-ness in the wake of the gradual formation and expansion of the European Union. Since its incarnation as the modern Federation, Russia has been excluded from the membership of the European Union and has often positioned itself as being in antagonistic opposition to the political project. Clearly, then, the Russian state is not participatory to this understanding of European-hood.

However, there are many ethnic Russians who call member states of the European Union their home. In the Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia in particular, ethnic Russians constitute sizable minorities (25% and 24%, respectively) and contribute significantly to public discourse around identity and civic participation in those countries. Much scholarly and media attention has been given to the legal manner in which the governments of Latvia and Estonia have dealt with this ethnic Russia minority, whose history in the Baltic is often seen by ethnic Latvians and Estonians as a form of colonization in the twilight years of Soviet imperialistic occupation. The (dis-)enfranchisement of Russians in Latvia and Estonia within civil society is complicated by their two-tier systems of citizenship and undefined citizenship, that have defined so much of the public discourse around this community since its inception. The institutions of non-citizens / undefined citizenship (nepilsoņi in Latvia, kodakondsuseta isik in Estonia; негражданство in Russian) have made up a unique civic innovation in the post-Soviet space, that have not been totally free from controversy, having faced accusations of deliberate state-imposed social exclusion against ethnic Russians (who constitute the vast majority of non-/undefined citizens). The city of Narva is known outside Estonia primarily for the speculative reports made by strategy analysts and curious journalists that this would be the target for ‘Russia’s next annexation’ – à la Crimea – owing to the ethnic majority there. Perched on the very edge of the European Union, in physical sight of the country their ancestors hail from, and spoken of by 15 outsiders as a potential fifth column demographic, do the Russians of Narva feel that they are truly ‘European’, and valued members of the Union?

This is an important question for European policymakers. As there are increasingly loud and frequent calls for an acceleration of EU unification, there is an increasing need for policymakers in Brussels to ensure that all communities in member states feel sufficiently ‘European’ not to risk undermining that union. The ethnic Russian population of Narva provides a clear case study, both geographic and demographic, of a community potentially at the edge of ‘European- ness’. An investigation into their perception of inclusivity and participation in Estonian and wider European society would be illuminating and likely applicable to other similar communities in the EU.

This literature review shall examine the history and current trend in academic writing of the phenomenon known as Othering, so as can be applied in an analysis of identity amongst this community of ethnic Russians in the Baltic. This paper specifically aims to lay the groundwork for an understanding of the self-perceived identity of ethnic Russians in Narva and lived experience (if existent or acknowledged) of Othering in their day-to-day lives on the border of Russia and the European Union. The wider intention of this literature review is to appreciate whether understandings of European identity amongst Russians in this corner of Estonia are reciprocated amongst other perceived marginalized communities in Europe, or if it is rooted in their Russian-ness, their non-Estonian-ness, ‘Eurasian’ identity, or a combination of any of the above factors. As such, this review shall not only be analyzing the content of extant literature around this subject, but also attempt to gauge the current prevailing trend in thought about this particular ethnic Russian community, and its significance in wider European public discourse. The structure of this paper shall be dual. Firstly, it shall briefly outline an understanding of historic and current though on the nature of what it is to be ‘European’ in terms of identity, juxtaposed by what it might mean to be ‘Russian’ for the relevant inhabitants of Narva and the wider Baltic; secondly, but primarily, it shall provide a review of academic literature on Othering, in multiple dimensions. Finally, this literature review shall provide its own analysis of the cited literature, regarding themes, trends, approaches, inconsistencies, and predict trends in future literature and manifest application of ideas into policy.

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2.1 A History of Russians in the Baltic The history of Russians in Latvia and Estonia stretches back many generations; the first Russian settlers came as Old Believers, fleeing religious strife at the time of the Great Schism of the

Russian Orthodox Church in the 17th Century. A few decades later, Russia conquered the land held by Sweden in the Great Northern War (1700-1721) and Russians came to permanently settle the newly-conquered land and form a Governate (Губерния) of the Empire. However, in the politicized context of Russians in Estonia today, many refer to the more recent arrivals, who came to Estonia and Latvia in the 1980s, as the government of the Soviet Union attempted to quell ethno-nationalist sentiment in the Republics by forcibly altering demographics. As the Soviet period from 1940-1991 is considered an illegal occupation in Estonia, these Russians are considered cynical colonizers by some nationalist Estonians, and the sentiment that they ought to ‘go back to where they came from’ is not uncommon. In the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian diaspora experienced a sense of legal, cultural, political and psychological loss or demotion, as they went from being the dominant nationality within their ‘own’ country, to being an ethnic minority (albeit a substantial one in some areas) now in ‘someone else’s land; this loss of cultural-political capital has been painful for the Russian diaspora, especially those who cannot understand their new national language, which constituted the majority of Russians in 1992 (Brubaker 1992, 272-273).

In his seminal, yet controversial and oft-criticized essay ‘Clash of Civilizations’ (1993) – later developed into a bestselling book, Samuel Huntington famously delineated the post-Cold War world into different civilizational districts and claimed that the future of human history would be molded by their inevitable rivalry and conflict. Though Huntington’s ideas have proven widely controversial and disputed in the academic community, they do give rise to an interesting question in the context of this review: what would this theory imply for people whose ‘civilizational’ cultural identity and ‘civilizational’ home differ?

This question brings us to the issue of identity and Othering in two dimensions: social-cultural; and spatial. According to Cheskin (2012), in the context of Russians in Latvia: “public projections of Russian-speaking identity are both a counter- reaction to, and a synthesis with, constructed 'Latvian', 'Russian' and 'European' identities and discourses”. That is to say, in the social-cultural dimension, Russian identity in Latvia is reactive and oppositional in nature: the Othered Other their surroundings as a coping mechanism to environmental discourse. Regarding the spatial dimension of Russian identity in the Baltic, Andrey Makarychev (2005, 17

481) considers the Russia-Estonia and Russia-Latvia borders to be “still in their infancy”. He also speaks of the ‘construction of Europe’ in the context of these borders, and advances that “conceptually, peripheries are presented as underdeveloped, inconveniently positioned and exposed to external dangers, and they are comprehended as subordinated territories” in line with the core-periphery conceptual model of Europe already discussed. As such, by association the inhabitants of these periphery areas are considered by inhabitants of the core to be subordinate to their own desires and interests.

2.2 A History of the Other The Self and the Other have Hegelian roots. That is to say, the phenomena are formed in the mind from a mental dialectic of the subject perceiving not only itself as Self, but also objects understood to be in some way an extension of that Self, whether because of shared characteristics or an emotional bond, and thereby casting as Other that which it infers negatively as an object not belonging to the set of categories understood as the phenomenal realm of Self. In infancy, this is how we learn of the world beyond our own bodies; in societies, this phenomenal-psychological process is the cradle of the formation of power structures.

The phenomenon of the Other and Othering has a long and complex history and is found explored in depth in the academic fields of philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and critical theory. Rooted at first in the Hegelian dialectic, modern philosophy became concerned with the Other in the 20th Century through its introduction in the writings of Simone de Beauvoir in 1949 (Brons 2015, 69). In the field of phenomenology, a branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of being, of lived experience and consciousness, the foundations for the modern understanding of the Other were laid in the work of Edmund Husserl, and advanced upon directly or indirectly through the writings of Buber, Sartre Foucault, Freud, Lacan, and others. The principle of casting a perceived human object as Other has had application in the subjugation and oppression of minority and Othered groups in the form of imperialism, colonialism, racialism and racism, misogyny, homophobia and other forms of prejudice and imbalanced power structures. As such, it has formed the basis of much of the research of postcolonial, feminist and queer critical theory, and academics exploring the history and manifestation of power, especially when rooted in culture.

On an individual level, viewing someone else as Other is not merely a cognitive recognition of the object as not-Self. Othering is the additional ‘recognition’ of the Other as inherently odd, 18 alien, even inferior to oneself. In everyday parlance, it is “phenomena of stereotyping and racialization” (Thomas-Olalde and Velho 2011, 27). Lila Abu-Lughod (1991, 87), cited by Dervin (2012) describes Othering as a phenomenon that “allows individuals to construct sameness and difference and to affirm their own identity. Thus, Othering is not just about the other but also about the self”. Schwalbe (2000, 777) defines Othering as “the defining into existence of a group of people who are identifiable, from the standpoint of a group with the capacity to dominate, as inferior”. Vinkenburg (2014, 382) cites Jensen’s (2011, 65) observation that iterative Othering is a series of “discursive processes by which powerful groups, who may or may not make up a numerical majority, define subordinate groups into existence in a reductionist way which ascribes problematic and/or inferior characteristics to these subordinate groups. Such discursive processes affirm the legitimacy and superiority of the powerful and condition identity formation among the subordinate”. To Other is to take a position of inherent opposition, of value-judgment, and of implicit recognition – warranted or otherwise – of a desired power dynamic and hierarchy between the Self as subject and the Other as object. Iterated on a societal level, this perception of outsiders and outsider groups as Other constitutes a tribal narrative and casts the Other into a position of weakness, relative to the subject group. Examples of this include pseudo-scientific racial theory, with ‘Whiteness’ being considered both the epitome of humankind and its norm; the same can be said of gender/sex relations, with ‘man’ historically and in some circles to this day being considered both ‘better’ and the assumed ‘neutral’ term over ‘Woman’. This violent iteration has had tragic consequences throughout history, especially regarding identity in Europe. There has been a prevailing thought in academic writing and enacted public policy for decades that the cultural trauma Europe inflicted upon itself through Othering – most viscerally in the form of the Holocaust – is resolvable only through the creation of a post-national Europe, that a “solution to national history is the European future” (Boyer 2005, 523). In fact, Boyer cites Matti Bunzl’s article in the same journal that “the Holocaust stands at the core of the new Europe”.

What is the direction of travel for Othering within Europe? While clearly social inequalities are slowly being combated and smoothed out across the continent, with women and minority groups holding more personal freedom and economic access than in centuries past, the form of Othering is transmuting to other identities, within a polity (the EU) especially that nominally seeks to gain unifying strength through their diversities. The reality is not so rose-tinted: “while European [national] borders are becoming invisible for some, they are all too hard and visible for others” (M’charek, Schramm, and Skinner 2014, 473). This same paper explores the 19 conceptualization of the Other as a phenotypic issue in border management relations: while racism is slowly abating, and is not as visceral or prominent in the public space as before, it is still prevalent in the private sphere and affects inter-community relations at national and local levels.

As well as presenting a phenotypic-racial approach to discussing Othering, there are of course other academic approaches besides that have a direct relevance to this paper’s subjects. One can consider Othering as “a key process in the justification of social arrangements” amongst communities (Staerklé 2013, 50); this in turn leads to writing such as Shoshana (2016), examining the role of class as a cultural-sociological dimension of othering. Bowman (2003) asserts that the discourse of inter-community relations is “one of acknowledging, accommodating, and rendering difference familiar”. Dervin (2012, 181-194) examines Othering through the sociological and anthropological constructs of cultural identity and its representation.

Alternatively, one can explore Othering as a dimension of space in social relations, in particular through the use of maps, which hold political power in their own right. In discussing the philosophy of Jean Baudrillard, MacLeod (2017, 158-159) elaborates that a country does not define the borders of the map, but rather the border defines the country itself. According to Johnson and Coleman (2012): “Societies have historically sought to spatialize difference – to other – even within the boundaries of supposedly unified polities … Certain regions become repositories for undesirable national traits as part of a dialectical process of nation and region building. The processes of othering are rarely as linear and tidy as proposed in some current formulations of the theory; rather, othering involves a host of concomitant processes that work together to produce economically and culturally differentiated regions. The processes by which particular places or regions become “othered” are not only interesting in the abstract but also carry with them enduring material consequences”. In terms of human geography, van Houtum and van Naerssen (2002) present ‘bordering’ as the spatial interpretation and application of Othering. The practice of geographic delineations therefore inherently Others those on the opposite side of the border from the perspective of the subject.

Finally, a common paradigm of the Other is the use of language, and its inherent alien nature to those who do not speak it (Vinkenburg 2014). This can be seen manifest in the instances where some languages’ denomination for a particular out-group (for example, ‘Germans / 20

Немцы’ in the Russian language) are a determination that those people do not speak correctly, and therefore, not at all.

The modern construction of a ‘European’ identity could be considered an example of institutionalized Temporal Othering, which can be defined as “a possibility for a political community to constitute its identity without any spatial delimitation by means of casting as Other its own past, whose repetition in the future it seeks to avoid” (Prozorov 2011, 1273). Prozorov notes that this “image” of such behavior by the EU is commonly spread, but up for debate, and contests the notion himself. However, the case is there for it to be made, that ‘Europe’ as modernly understood, is an idea of peace and institutional harmony, and the exemplary past of violence, disharmony and fracture in European history is cast as Other to the modern European Union project.

2.3 Europe – Where and What is it? This paper is concerned with Europe as both concept and space. Understandings of both natures – in lay and academic thinking – have evolved over time, according to local and regional political realities. In “Europe: How Far?”, W. H. Parker (1960) explores in detail how the perceived outer bounds of Europe have been altered on the map for centuries, in accordance not with better understandings of geography, but with shifts in political reality and the locus of power. Power, of course, is central to the practice of Othering, which has thus been central to the changing borders of ‘Europe’. One recurrent feature of the history of Europe’s borders from the 16th-Century onwards is the inclusion or exclusion of Russia (dually as a civilization and as a state) within them. Regarded as decidedly not-Europe by the peoples to the West, Russia was finally and conclusively conceded to be both European as a both a cultural entity and a geographic one, when the border between Europe and Asia was declared by Swedish cartographer Philip Johan von Strahlenberg to be the Ural mountains and river in 1730 (Parker 1960, 285). This new boundary became the accepted convention in Russia and the rest of Europe. But the practice of Othering Russians as ‘Europeanly’ inferior would prove to continue.

While purporting to be a fortifying project, universally beneficial to all its participants achieving ‘unity through diversity’, the process of European integration has long faced criticism from multiple angles for its perceived core-periphery (West European-Other) dialectic Weltanschauung, regarded as at first a means to maintain some semblance of control over decolonizing Africa in the 1950s and 1960s, dominance of a capitalist class over the working 21 class, and latterly as a means to assert Western European notions of ‘Europe’ over its Eastern part, through expansion (dis-)guised as welcoming inclusivity (Jonsson 2017). This paper’s premise aligns with that of the work Europe faces Europe, which contributor and editor Johan Fornäs (2017, 3) claims will provide insight into “what Europe may become tomorrow”. As he alludes, much of the public discourse on Europe’s ‘direction’ and ‘vector’ has emanated from its political-cultural center, in its Western part, around the ‘core’ of the Inner Six (France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries). Less attention has historically been devoted to the considerations of the vision of Europe’s future from its ‘periphery’, understood usually not as Iberia, Greece and Scandinavia, but the former Warsaw Pact countries, some of which border the Inner Six (Czechia, Poland, Slovenia) in Central Europe but are nonetheless not considered ‘central’ to European discourse. Further removed again, owing to geography and their small populations, are the Baltic states.

Green (2013, 346) cites Abélès’s (2000) argument that “the EU's vision of Europe is that Europe is a constantly evolving, never completed, project involving continual compromise that leaves the meaning or value of Europe, as an idea, permanently indistinct”. In fact: ‘Europe is a state of mind’ was the assertion of José Manuel Barroso’s administration during his tenure as President of the European Commission (2004-2014). Carl Cederberg (2017) examined this statement in his 2017 article ‘Europe as Identity and Ideal: Reading Barroso’s ‘New Narrative’ Heretically alongside Hegel, Husserl and Patočka’ and concludes that Barroso’s vision of Europe is nothing new, and belongs entirely to the historic “grand narrative of Europe”, as previously espoused by the aforementioned philosophers. By implication, if the European Commission’s understanding of Europe is – consciously or unconsciously – rooted in centuries- old ideas, it begs the question: how versatile and adaptable is their policy towards improving situations of Othering, and countering the core-periphery model?

The phenomenon of Europeans Othering those in a different geographic segment of the (sub)continent is clearly not a new one. In antiquity, when Mediterranean cultures were the core locus of power, the European ‘divide’ between ‘civilized’ and ‘savage’ followed a North/South dichotomy. The politicians and philosophers of Greece and Rome saw the tribes living north of the Alps and Carpathians as barbarians, vastly inferior in comparison with their own cultures. The Great Schism of the Christian Church into Catholic and Orthodox, which began in 1066 and developed insipidly over time, promoted further a new form of Othering in Europe along a dichotomy of faith: the violent summit of this Othering materialized in the Sack of 22

Constantinople in 1204, when Catholics butchered the Greek Orthodox inhabitants of the city and grievously strained ecumenical relations for centuries thereon. However, this spiritual divide would not evolve into a political divide across Europe for another few centuries to come. Larry Wolff (1994) presents the case that the division of Europe into ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’, with the value-judgement connotations of ‘inferior’ and ‘superior’ is a modern construct, harking back to its ideological foundations in 18th-century Enlightenment thinking, and entrenched over time until solidified in the ‘Iron Curtain’ of the Cold War era; such thinking has persevered after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Warsaw Pact regimes thereafter. One legacy of this Othering process is the push in some of these countries to ‘lose’ the label ‘Eastern European’, which is deemed inferior to ‘Central European’ (cf. Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, and Slovenia) or ‘Northern European’ (cf. Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia; many people the latter even strive for the country to be considered ‘Nordic’ over ‘Baltic’, for the same reason that the geographic term conveys greater prestige internationally, by association with the political and economic success of Scandinavia). Each of these nations’ attempts to alter geographic and cultural delineations on the map and in the minds of citizens and foreigners alike is an attempt to overcome spatial Othering and transcend their imposed position of ‘periphery’ to advance towards the European ‘core’. Pedersen (2008) also emphasizes the observed contemporary cultural schism running across Europe, between West and East, ‘Old’ and ‘New’. He argues that this is more prevalent to present discourse than political dimensions.

Data suggests that, at the time of the 2004 expansion, the populations of the ‘New Europe’ member states felt more attached to ‘Europe’ as an idea than did the populations of the established ‘Old Europe’ member states at the time; in juxtaposition, “nationalist attachment” was more prevalent in Western Europe than in Eastern Europe (Schilde 2014, 651). It would appear that the public zeitgeist around joining the European Union amongst citizens of these Central and Eastern European countries was more open to supra-national associations and shared identity across national borders than citizens of the countries that were already part of the supra-national union. This is perhaps not surprising. After all, these ‘new’ countries were joining the EU at a time when it was already established as an identifiable bloc, with unifying treaties and declared values. On the other hand, ‘Old Europe’ countries, such as France, or Italy, had become part of the European Union when it was not the European Union as such, but the European Coal and Steel Community; the Union, with its identity, symbols, hymn and modern structure, evolved around these countries’ memberships of it, and thus their citizens were never at any point presented with the case that they were ‘joining’ a coherent, identifiable bloc. 23

Thomas Risse (2005, 291) cites Haas’ (1958) early research into multi-layered identities and civic loyalties in Europe and affirms that “transferring loyalty to Europe and the EU is possible without giving up one's national (or regional or local or gender) identities”. However, Risse’s findings suggest that, contrary to what one might first assume, public ‘loyalty’ to European Union institutions does not follow directly from perceived material benefit from “material benefits” such as infrastructural funding or the right to freedom of movement, or even “exposure to European institutions” at all, but rather through a repeated, iterated process in which “Europeanness of ‘becoming European’ is gradually being embedded in understandings of national identities”. Likewise, Fligstein, Polyakova and Sandholtz (2012) assert that, contrary to early theorization that a European identity was mutually exclusive with national identity, “European identity has not displaced national identities in the EU, but, for a significant share of EU citizens, a European identity exists alongside a national identity”. Moreover, they concur with Risse’s analysis that Europeanization is an iterative process of participation, which is tied to the breadth and scope of an individual’s “economic and social horizons” – those whose lives “are essentially local are more likely to assert nationalist identities”.

2.4 Russia as the European Other The history of Russia and its interactions as a state – in various incarnations – with the rest of Europe has been a historical dialectic of whether or not Russia is Other to Europe, and vice versa. Russian and non-Russian alike, there has been fierce debate as to the ‘European-ness’ of the Russian people and culture, with consensus often found along the lines of political comfort at the time. Even the supposedly immutable borders of where ‘Europe’ ends, and ‘Asia’ begins have varied according to political acceptance of how ‘European’ Russia is. Neumann (1998) and Bruter (2005, 82) discuss the history of Russia and her people as Other to Europe. This naturally begs the question: does the ‘European’ status of Russia and Russians within Russia have an impact of the ‘European’ status of the Russian diaspora within Europe, especially a ‘Europe’ so politically conceived as the European Union? Can one be de-Othered? If so, is this process of de-Othering consistent across an ethnic group, a community, or is it perniciously selective according to the will and whim of the subject observer, as is often the case with Othering to begin with?

Existential anguish over the authenticity of Russia’s European credentials was a driving factor behind Peter the Great’s vision of St Petersburg, built as Russia’s “Window on the West”, and utilizing the Germanic “-burg” root over the Slavic “-grad” to denote the city’s – and by 24 extension, Russia’s – emancipation from non-European ‘backwardness’. The debates between the Slavophiles and Westernizers of the 19th Century in Russia encapsulate this civilizational angst as to its place, its destiny. Likewise, non-Russian outsiders have historically debated Russia’s eligibility to sit among the pantheon of European nations. Even if considered authentically ‘European’, Russia has still historically been cast as Other in as far as it is cast as the Great Threat to Europe, a dangerous and terrifying state ‘on the edge’, which cannot be seen to act rationally or fairly – “Russia–EU relations have often been presented in terms of a normative gap, with the EU appearing as a normative and Russia as a non-normative actor… [this] normative agenda in Eastern Europe serves instrumental purposes. Selective norm promotion has the potential to change the hierarchy of identities among post-Soviet states” (Casier 2013, 1377). This argumentation that Russia is inherently dangerous has historically and presently led to a securitization of Central and Eastern Europe, with the security of the Baltic region in particular being “constituted by discourses of danger revolving around Russian Otherness and European Sameness” (Jæger 2000, 18). The territory of the Baltic states delineates the fusion/fissure line of the so-called Western and Eastern agendas of security perception, as well as the ‘old’ and ‘new’ schools of security thought (Jæger 2000, 20). Therefore: applying the lens of the Copenhagen School, the Baltic states – and Narva / Ivangorod in particular, perhaps – constitute a Regional Security Complex vis-à-vis international relations with Russia. Exogenous discourse around the Baltic Russians, and Narva(ns) most notably, arguably also constitutes securitization. According to Balzacq (2005, 179): “Securitization is a rule-governed practice, the success of which does not necessarily depend on the existence of a real threat, but on the discursive ability to effectively endow a development with such a specific complexion.” Buzan and Wæver (2003, 415) note that Russia and the three Baltic states “form a ‘regional security complex’, i.e. a geographically coherent set of two or more states whose security perceptions are closely interlinked”, and that – whether they like it or not – securitization issues have formed an integral role in the post-Soviet political histories of these states. These same authors discuss elsewhere the potential to purport that – in the aftermath of Crimea’s annexation in 2014 – there has been a “(re)securitisation” of political discourse regarding Russia and the Baltic states (Fernandes and Correia 2018).

According to Berg and Ehin (2016, 10; cit. Miniotaite 2003, 210): “accession conditionality [to the European Union] has encouraged the constitution of a liberal post-modern state identity in the Baltic states”, the same of which cannot be said for the post-Soviet Russian Federation. However, this casting of Russia as Other to Europe has also at times been politically expedient 25 for Russian leadership, as has been proven the case in contemporary political discourse, when rhetorical analysis performed on public speeches delivered by Russian officials proves that “an overwhelmingly positive image of Russia with a rather negative image of the EU for almost the entirety of this period [2004-2014]” (Schiffers 2015, 1), which implicitly casts Russia to its own people as natural, righteous and ontologically ‘the Self’, and the EU and its constituent member states as politically unnatural, culturally immoral, and ontologically ‘the Other’.

Concerns over Russia’s ‘place’ in ‘Europe’ bleed into the lexicology of describing Russians who leave Russia’s borders. In fact, the terminology used to describe these communities in the Russian ‘Near Abroad’ has been contentious. This paper’s use of the word ‘diaspora’ to describe Russians in the Baltic states, though approved of and used by Shlapentokh, may be yet deemed inaccurate by other scholars, such as Laitin and Melvin, who prefer the term “Russian settler community”, or simply “Russian-speaking population”, respectively (Poppe and Hagendoorn 2001, 57). In fact, per John Armstrong’s oft-cited definition (1976, 393) of a diaspora as “any ethnic collectivity which lacks a territorial base within a given polity”, this may well be true. After all, a place such as Narva in Estonia could be argued as constituting a ‘territorial base’ for a significant portion of Estonia’s ethnic Russian community. In Latvia, Daugavpils and pockets of Riga could be argued as performing the same function. In commentary on these communities, commentators – both journalistic and academic alike – can often be found as pointing out their novelty, as if the nature of their immigration (being predominantly in the 20th century) negates a sense of laying down roots, being attached to the land, being “sons of the soil” who are “entitled to more rights than are newcomers” (Acharya, Laitin and Zhang 2018; Kolstø 1999, 607). However, while possibly providing a broad corollary indicator for integration and ‘settling-down’, the passing of time is not a guaranteed proxy for the depth of the establishment of a ‘base’, ‘territorial’ of otherwise. The experience(s) and contribution to political discourse of the Russians in Latvia and Estonia has to a significant extent molded the post-Soviet experience of these states, and is to some extent coterminous with that history.

2.5 Analysis of Themes, Approaches, Ideas in the Literature; and its Implications The above has provided the reader with an overview of some of the academic literature relating to Othering, and has embedded such in a specific context: namely, the experience of Russians in the Baltic; the historic and ongoing development of ‘Europe’ and its relevance to the debate around Othering. 26

In the chapter cited above, Carl Cederberg (2017, 35) paraphrases Paul Valéry to claim that: “the particularity of Europe … is its claim to universality”. This pithy aphorism evokes much of the sentiment in the other cited literature on ‘Europe’ and its essence. However, this “particularity of Europe”, with enough accompanying justification, could be attributed to other regions, cultures, identities. Europe – and the people who live within it – has certainly followed a particular trajectory in history; that cannot be denied. But ‘European’ discourse should not fall into the trap of exceptionalism through a discourse of tolerance, lest it inherently Other alternative voices within Europe in the process.

As regards the expanse of multi-paradigm discourse and literature on Othering itself, be it social, cultural, spatial, or linguistic: this paper predicts that the future likely holds scope for analysis in digital Othering, in terms of internet access and negotiating ‘space’ in the new currency of online data. This predicted future trend in the worldwide manifestation of Othering will likely be pan-cultural, but with local idiosyncrasies based on national (and supra-national in the case of the EU) political systems. Russia’s attempt to form its own RuNet, independent of the World Wide Web, is an example of this. Digital Othering amongst communities would be particularly pertinent in a country such as Estonia, which prides itself on being a small Silicon Valley on the Baltic Sea. The country has led tech innovation in Europe, trailblazing the new interface of online civic participation with its e-elections, and more recently Estonian e-residency. Citizens’ interaction with their governments – in Estonia and elsewhere – are moving increasingly to the cyber realm. The Other of the future is likely to be the person who has poor access to the internet, or a lack of sophistication in using it. In a similar vein, big data farming of consumers by tech companies (and in some cases, governments) will give rise to potential scenarios of social engineering through the manipulation of online algorithms, that push information-entertainment content to users according to their previous preferences in the most benign case, and according to the preferences of those who pay the algorithm-maker, in the most malign. We may be looking ahead at a world where the constitutive Other is formed by design. This may be a gap in the present literature on Othering that is waiting to be filled: while the manipulation of Othering has been an historic tool for demagogues and dictators, to pit ‘the masses’ either against one another or ‘The Enemy’ in order to maintain power, modern technology creates new possibilities for this practice that may be realized in the coming years; the implication for information warfare potential is clear. 27

Understanding citizens’ perceived experience of Othering is an important aspect of building public policy. Though the phenomenon is global and pan-cultural, in the context of ethnic Russians in Narva (and even the wider Baltic and EU), it ought to be of interest to any policymaker concerned with improving the health of civil society in Estonia. It should also be considered a potential security issue. Lying directly on the border with Russia, Narva is often mooted as a potential hostile annexation target through ground invasion by casual punditry. While this may not be really plausible (Estonia’s membership of NATO in all likelihood protects it for now), the Russian communities of the Baltic states are certainly targeted by Kremlin propaganda as part of wider information warfare ‘active measures’.

This literature review has explored the history and current trend of thought in academic research concerning Othering, and how it relates to the specific context of ethnic Russians in Narva. This phenomenon has implications for contemporary discourse on the political nature of the European Union’s understanding of what ‘Europe’ is, and raises questions of policy direction for both the Estonian authorities regarding this community, and policymakers in other EU states regarding communities considered on the ‘edge’ of their own societies.

It is therefore possible to conclude that Baltic Russians, especially in the Estonian border town of Narva – where there is a linguistic and cultural border with the rest of the country and a political border with Russia – conceivably experience Othering. In the context of this paper, this conclusion would suggest that if detailed and specific research were undertaken on Narvan Russians’ (or other Estonian Russians’ or Latvian Russians’) political and social relations with ‘Europe’ in the context of a discourse of Othering, it could be highly fruitful and illuminating.

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Theoretical Framework This chapter outlines the methodology behind the theoretical framework behind this paper’s research question.

3.1 Meta-Analytic ‘Research Synthesis’ Approach The theoretical framework of this paper is the application of a meta-analysis of qualitative data. This is sometimes referred to in academic literature as a meta-synthesis (Levitt 2018). Meta- analyses are more commonly performed upon quantitative data-sets, using raw numerical data for review in the fields of natural sciences. Thus, meta-syntheses of qualitative data-sets are comparatively rarer. However, it is by no means unheard of. It has been used as a template for research in the field of clinical psychotherapy (Levitt 2018; Timulak 2009) and the psychological implications of subjective identity, though applied to a sociological and political context, render this an acceptable methodology to employ for the purposes of this paper. This academic approach has a widespread application, which is growing increasingly popular in scientific and non-scientific academic fields alike (Timulak 2014, 481) and its nomenclature has come under the guises of: “qualitative meta-analysis, qualitative meta-synthesis, meta- ethnography, grounded formal theory, meta-study or meta-summary (cf. Onwuegbuzie, and Frels 2016, 27).” Though dealing with qualitative data on an ‘ethnic group’ (here: Russians in Latvia and Estonia), the term ‘meta-ethnography’ – a meta-analysis of ethnographies – might not be suitable, as an ethnography typically engages in the direct observation of lived experiences of people, rather than reports on their subjective views.

Specifically, the ‘branch’ this paper’s meta-analytic framework is better described as a “research synthesis” approach, as it is engaging with exclusively qualitative content. Research synthesis is “the integration of existing knowledge and research findings pertinent to an issue. The aim of synthesis is to increase the generality and applicability of those findings and to develop new knowledge through the process of integration. Synthesis is promoted as an approach that deals with the challenge of ‘information overload’, delivering products that further our understanding of problems and distil relevant evidence for decision-making” (Wyborn et al. 2018, 72). Therefore, this paper shall take three major data-sets from three major reports conducted for both academic and public policy purposes, and cross-examine their findings to develop a sharper understanding of the more specific interest of ‘European’ identity amongst Russians in Estonia and Latvia. This synthesis of research seeks to precisely cut through the wall of data in these large sets, and distil the information incised for greater clarity. 29

This ‘research synthesis’ methodological approach has been selected specifically to demonstrate one of the core arguments of this thesis: there is a gap – a ‘space’ – in research literature between academia and policy reports. It is known from the academic commentary and investigation cited in Chapter 2 that the Russian minority communities who inhabit Estonia and Latvia have had a constitutively different post-Soviet experience than their native majority ethnic Estonian and ethnic Latvian counterparts. This synthesizing methodology, by comparing the findings of major policy reports spanning the last decade of research, ought to be the best way to show how and where there is room for improvement in the methodologies employed by surveyors and researchers, and what this might mean for those pursuing research in this area for both academic and civic political ends. This research synthesis shall first extract the data points in the three major reports most relevant to the question of this paper, lay them out for the reader in as concise and clear a manner as possible, and then analyze said data points in the context of the research question, first individually, and then as by cross-reference.

3.2 Research Purpose At a time of intense global turmoil, the European Union continues to strive to create discourse of common ‘European’ identity and solidarity across and within Member States. In confronting these serious contemporary challenges, the Commission in Brussels, governments across the national capitals, and academic observers in universities across the continent are still grappling with the idea of what purpose the European Union ought to serve, and the nature of its capabilities in doing so. The recent – at times heated – debates around challenges to Europe in 2020 have exacerbated discourse of a fiscally frugal, wealthy Northern ‘core Europe’ and a poorer Southern ‘periphery Europe’ straddled with uncontrolled, frivolous debt. Interestingly, this fiscal core-periphery dynamic cuts across and subverts traditional discourses of ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Europe, becoming lest East-West, and more North-South.

Despite rather developed programmes aimed at the supporting minority rights and cultural heritage(s), mainstream discourse around the EU’s purpose, capabilities and competences often revolves around its relevance at the state level; in turn, this usually in practice correlates with service to political-majority interests in each nation-state. In seeking to attain political, symbolic, emotional relevance in the daily lives of all citizens, it is all too easy to direct resources and political capital towards the hearts and minds of ‘majority’ political stakeholders in each EU Member State. There is risk that in the process of crafting an EU-wide narrative of similar identity, due to the scale and complexity of the 27 Member States’ histories and current 30 political realities, for the sake of simplicity and efficacy this discourse would face reductionist tendencies and ignore minority understandings of ‘Europeanness’.

Russians in Latvia and Estonia have their own historical and political realities which have been explored by academic research since 1991, but which have primarily focused on qualitative experiences of identity and belonging at the national level in both countries. These communities would serve as an excellent basepoint for research into EU-wide identity and experiences of Othering. Are communities Othered at only the local and national levels, or at the supra-national (EU) level as well? Can the EU’s identity-building project be successful in overcoming extant discourse(s) of core-periphery dynamics across Member States (‘Old’ vs. ‘New’ Europe), and even within them? Research into qualitative identity amongst Russians in Latvia and Estonia also provides solid grounding for further investigation in other, related academic pursuits: for example, those in the academic field of securitization issues might find benefit in the results of this paper, as these communities have previously been the topic of research, especially that of the border community of Narva in Estonia; likewise, researchers of ‘fifth-column’ discourse, especially surrounding issues of immigration, would plausibly reap some benefit in this paper’s findings. This piece of research strives to provide a new perspective to a strong field of literature, from which others may derive value and go on to conduct their own investigation(s) in a similar meta-analytic style. The changing nature of the European Union and its interaction(s) with its citizens and residents, and the fluidity of phenomena such as identity and Othering, signify that this branch of academic research has potential for future growth, updates and revision(s), as European history evolves and engenders new perceptions of ‘Europeanness’.

3.3 Primary Data-Set Selection The primary data-sets from which data will be extracted, explained, and analyzed by this paper are the following reports:

1. Standard Eurobarometer 92 – European Citizenship (Autumn 2019) https://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/index.cfm/ResultDoc/download/Docu mentKy/90256.

Standard Eurobarometer 92 – Public Opinion in the European Union (Autumn 2019) https://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/index.cfm/ResultDoc/download/Docu mentKy/90258. 31

2. GESIS – International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) 2013 – National Identity III Variable Report 2015/35 https://dbk.gesis.org/dbksearch/download.asp?file=ZA5950_cdb.pdf.

3. ENRI-EAST (Interplay of European, National and Regional Identities: nations between states along the new eastern borders of the European Union) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314394348_ENRI-East_Final_Report.

The three data-sets to be further explored below have been selected specifically for their diverse backgrounds to provide a fair balance in representing the existing surveys being commissioned directly by the European Union’s Commission, and those being conducted externally.

The Eurobarometer is a programme by which the Commission continuously measures various social and political sentiments across Member States. National surveys are delegated to survey agencies. Eurobarometer 92 (Autumn 2019) is the most recently available Eurobarometer general report focussed on citizenship, identity, and perceived attachment(s) to various levels of government (the reports “European Citizenship” and “Public Opinion in the European Union” are contained within the Eurobarometer 92 report series, and are therefore considered as one for the purposes of this paper). This is therefore a good, appropriate, and representative example of directly commissioned EU policy research. The origin and purpose of the Standard Eurobarometer series is to produce a longitudinal study that charts opinion trends within the EU. Surveys within this series are produced biannually. The official stated aim of the Standard Eurobarometer survey is to “investigate topics … from a European perspective” which is a highly interesting statement for this paper, as it presupposes that such a thing as an opinion being fundamentally ‘European’ in nature exists.

Secondly, the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) run by the Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences (GESIS) in Mannheim is a highly detailed, comprehensive survey programme, which, in this particular iteration (National Identity III) investigates, of course, national identity across not only the states of the European Union – though they are the majority of countries represented – but other countries around the world besides, such as Canada, South Africa, and Russia. Naturally, the Russia results gathered by this survey programme are highly pertinent for the interest of this paper: they provide an excellent point of comparison with the results of Estonia and Latvia. The ISSP is iterated les frequently than the Eurobarometer programme, and therefore the cited is the most recent available report (research from 2013; publication in 2015). 32

Finally, the ENRI-EAST: Interplay of European, National and Regional Identities project, completed in 2011, was commissioned and granted funding by the EU Commission in 2008 as a response to the realization made by this paper: minority groups in Eastern Europe had been raising their concerns that their voices were not being heard in either civic politics, nor by the national-level surveying within the Eurobarometer structure and similar EU programmes. The project was coordinated by the Institute for Advanced Studies, an independent research institute in Vienna. The ENRI-EAST project tackles questions such as “what does it mean to be European, belonging to a nation or region for the specified groups?” and “what are the general perceptions of Europe and nations in these countries with respect to the own nationality?”, as well as addressing the “narratives and discourses” around compatibility and incompatibility between regional, national and “supranational”, “cosmopolitan”, and “universal” (European) identities amongst significant ethnic minority groups in the “EU-CIS borderlands”. One of these groups is the Russian minority in Latvia and Lithuania; the Russian minority in Estonia, however, is not covered. As such, the findings of this project provide some of the data sought by this paper, and an interesting cross-reference for other minority groups in the region, though falls short of providing exactly the data sought after here. In conjunction with one another, these datasets provide a solid foundation for this paper, with established methodologies.

As the ENRI-EAST project was directly supported and majority-funded by the European Commission, and the Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences (GESIS) has also taken on commissioned EU work, including the Eurobarometer series, these three backgrounds and styles of creating policy reports collectively cover the core of the European Union’s published research into the political and social wonts and desires of its citizens. This selection is therefore both concise and representative of the ‘policy’ side of the conducted research that this thesis places under scrutiny. While it would, of course, be preferable to perform a cross-sectional meta-analytic study, synthesizing research conducted at the same or similar time, this is unfortunately not possible. While the Eurobarometer series is iterated twice per year, and is therefore ‘up-to-date’ in being represented from Autumn 2019, neither the GESIS ISSP, nor the ENRI-EAST, have been conducted in a similar timeframe, and the reports presented here are their most recent iterations. As shall be further elaborated upon below, this inability for researchers to compare these comparative collections of data from the same, or even at least adjacent, year, is problematic in itself. This cross-sectional ‘information gap’ between major reports on European identity, and especially European/EU ‘attachment’ in ‘post-Soviet’ Europe, is one of the core arguments of this thesis – there is a ‘space’ in policy literature. 33

Data Findings This chapter extirpates the most relevant data points from the selected policy research reports and concisely presents them to the reader.

4.1 Eurobarometer 92 (2019)

The ‘European Citizenship’ Report of Eurobarometer 92 notes that attachment to the European Union is “strikingly” strong in Latvia, whilst quite average in Estonia – 73% and 59% ‘positive attachment’ to the EU, respectively, vs. a bloc-wide (excluding the UK) weighted average of 57% (p. 12).

Furthermore, regarding perceived harmony of ‘European values’ across member states, Latvia stands out as most likely to claim EU countries are “distant” from one another, as opposed to “close”; again, Estonia sits very close to the mean in this survey – 60% “distant” and 37% “close” (Latvia); 38% “distant” and 56% “close” (Estonia); vs. an EU27 mean of 41% “distant” and 54% “close”. (p. 44)

This Eurobarometer report also establishes respondents’ self-declared attachment to their city/town/village, to their country, to the European Union, and to Europe, the last two of which are highly pertinent for the research of this paper.

In response to the question “please tell me how you feel attached to your city/town/village?”: (% - total ‘attached’)

Estonia: 87% Latvia: 93% EU27: 89% (range: 75-98%) (pp. 6-7)

In response to the question “please tell me how attached you feel attached to your country?”: (% - total ‘attached’)

Estonia: 95% Latvia: 94% EU27: 91% (range: 82-99%) (pp. 8-9) 34

In response to the question “please tell me how attached you feel to the European Union?”: (% - total ‘attached’)

Estonia: 59% Latvia: 73% EU27: 57% (range: 37-76%)

(pp. 12-13)

In response to the question “please tell me how attached you feel to Europe?”: (% - total ‘attached’)

Estonia: 60% Latvia: 75% EU27: 65% (range: 40-81%) (pp. 14-15)

Though the report performs a socioeconomic breakdown of some of the countries in this ‘attachment’ section, depicting the spread of factors such as gender, age, profession, class, and financial position (pp. 10-11; pp. 17-18), Latvia and Estonia are not included in this additional breakdown of data. As such, it is not known ‘who’ is providing the above results for these two countries.

In the concurrently released ‘Public Opinion in the European Union’ document as part of the Eurobarometer 92 Report, a similar question was posed to respondents:

“In general, does the EU conjure up for you a very positive, fairly positive, neutral, fairly negative, or very negative image?” (% - total ‘positive’, ‘neutral’, ‘negative’, ‘don’t know’)

Estonia: 49%, 41%, 9%, 1% Latvia: 42%, 47%, 10%, 1% EU28: 42%, 37%, 20%, 1% (pp. 141-143)

This data shows that respondents in Latvia and Estonia have a less negative view of the EU than the average.

35

Finally, back in the “Citizenship in the European Union” report of Eurobarometer 92:

In response to the question “please tell me to what extent … you feel a citizen of the EU?” (% - total affirmative)

Estonia: 80% Latvia: 73% EU27: 72% (pp. 27-32)

In analyzing socio-demographic backgrounds of respondents from all countries concerned, the report finds that:

The sense of European citizenship is most widespread among Europeans aged 15-24 years (78%), those who continued education up to the age of 20 or beyond (79%), students (82%), managers (80%) and people who consider themselves upper (86%) and upper middle class (83%). (p. 31)

Surveys in Latvia were conducted by Kantar TNS Latvia, with 1,000 participants (p. TS1). No specifications of respondents’ backgrounds are detailed.

Surveys in Estonia were conducted by Kantar Emor, with 1,001 participants (p. TS1). No specifications of respondents’ backgrounds are detailed.

4.2 GESIS – ISSP 2013 (2015) This International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) report, commissioned by the GESIS- Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, asks an equivalent set of questions to the Eurobarometer regarding personal feelings of attachment to different levels of locality, with attachment to the European Union being replaced by attachment to county or province. Thus, a direct comparison can be made between the answers relating to attachment to one’s city/town/province, one’s country, and to Europe.

36

In response to the question “how close do you feel to your town or city?”:

In Estonia – of those who could or would give a valid answer – 42.2% of respondents said “very close” 43.9% said “close” 12.5% said “not very close” 1.3% said “not close at all”

In Latvia – of those who could or would give a valid answer – 34.8% of respondents said “very close” 45.6% said “close” 17.2% said “not very close” 2.4% said “not close at all”

In Russia – of those who could or would give a valid answer – 26.1% of respondents said “very close” 40.8% said “close” 24.3% said “not very close” 8.7% said “not close at all” (p. 12)

In response to the question “how close do you feel to your country?”:

In Estonia – of those who could or would give a valid answer – 48.4% of respondents said “very close” 38.3% said “close” 12.0% said “not very close” 1.4% said “not close at all”

In Latvia – of those who could or would give a valid answer – 32.8% of respondents said “very close” 46.2% said “close” 18.8% said “not very close” 2.1% said “not close at all” 37

In Russia – of those who could or would give a valid answer – 24.3% of respondents said “very close” 40.0% said “close” 23.4% said “not very close” 12.2% said “not close at all” (p. 16)

In response to the question “how close do you feel to your continent?”:

In Estonia – of those who could or would give a valid answer – 8.3% of respondents said “very close” 31.3% said “close” 43.8% said “not very close” 16.6% said “not close at all”

In Latvia – of those who could or would give a valid answer – 5.6% of respondents said “very close” 20.1% said “close” 47.1% said “not very close” 27.2% said “not close at all”

In Russia – of those who could or would give a valid answer – 2.0% of respondents said “very close” 9.6% said “close” 31.0% said “not very close” 57.3% said “not close at all” (p. 18)

In the case of Russia, it is not clear whether individual respondents are residents of the European or Asian part of Russia.

Surveys in Estonia were conducted by Turu-uuringute AS, with 1,009 participants (p. vii). Of these 1,009 participants, 713 self-identified as ethnically Estonian, 225 self-identified as ethnically Russian, 10 self-identified as Ukrainian, while 19 self-identified as an ‘Other’ 38 ethnicity, and 42 either did not know how to self-identify, or declined to answer (p. 366). This provided the study with a “valid” (usable from knowledge of ethnic background i.e. excluding ‘Don’t Know’ and ‘No Answer’) total ethnic balance of 73.7% ethnic Estonian, and 23.3% ethnic Russian, with 3% of other or unknown ethnicity, which is approximately commensurate with the total reported ethnic percentages in official data (Statistics Estonia 2020); therefore, this study is considered representative of Estonia’s demographic profile in terms of ethnicity, which is significant for this paper. The conductors of the survey state that “weighting was performed based on the national population census 2011 data” (p. 745).

Surveys in Latvia were conducted by the Institute of Sociological Research, with 1,000 participants (p. viii). No specifications of respondents’ backgrounds are detailed. Of these 1,000 participants, 646 self-identified as ethnically Latvian, 311 self-identified as ethnically Russian, 4 self-identified as ethnically Belarussian, 3 self-identified as ethnically Romani, 5 self- identified as ethnically Lithuanian, 2 self-identified as ethnically Polish, 4 self-identified as ethnically Ukrainian, 1 self-identified as ethnically Moldovan, 1 self-identified as ethnically Tatar, while the remaining 23 refused to provide a self-identified ethnicity (p. 398). This provided the study with a “valid” (usable from knowledge of ethnic background i.e. excluding ‘Refused to Answer’) total ethnic balance of 66.1% ethnic Latvian, and 31.8% ethnic Russian, with 2.1% of other or unknown ethnicity. This percentage of self-identified ethnic Latvian participants is approximately commensurate with the total reported in national official data; however, the percentage of ethnic Russians in Latvia is reportedly closer to 25% (Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia 2020). Therefore, this study provides a relatively amplified voice to Latvia’s ethnic Russian community. The conductors of the survey state that “data were weighted according to the inverse probability of respondent being selected” (p. 745).

Surveys in Russia were conducted by the Levada Center in Moscow, with 1,516 participants (p. viii). No specifications of respondents’ backgrounds are detailed. Of these 1,516 participants, 1293 self-identified as ethnically Russian, 12 self-identified as ethnically Ukrainian, 5 self-identified as ethnically Belarussian, 38 self-identified as ethnically Tatar, 6 self-identified as ethnically Bashkir, 2 self-identified as ethnically Jewish, 6 self-identified as ethnically German, 35 self-identified as ethnically belonging to “Volga peoples” (“Mari, Mordva, Chuvash, Udmurt”), 24 self-identified as ethnically belonging to “North Caucasus peoples” (“Adyg, Cherkes, Chechen, etc.”), 11 self-identified as ethnically belonging to “Siberia and North peoples” (“Byrat, Khakas, Yakut, etc.”), 7 self-identified as ethnically belonging to “Middle Asia peoples” (“Kazakh, Uzbek, etc.”), 29 self-identified as ‘Other’, 39 while the remaining 48 refused to provide a self-identified ethnicity (p. 412). This provided the study with a “valid” (usable from knowledge of ethnic background i.e. excluding ‘Refused to Answer’) total ethnic balance of 88.1% ethnic Russian, and 11.9% of respondents belonging to one of the other ethnicities living in the Russian Federation. According to official figures, the self-reported ethnic Russian population of the Russian Federation is approximately 80% (Federal State Statistic Service 2010), so this study slightly, but not significantly, amplifies the voice of the dominant majority. The conductors of the survey state that “the weighting procedure is based on the Census 2010” (p. 745).

4.3 ENRI-EAST (2011) The stated aim of the ENRI-EAST project’s final published report is to attain “a deeper understanding of the ways in which the modern European identities and regional cultures are formed and inter-communicated in the Eastern part of the European continent” (p. 4).

The ENRI-EAST project presents itself as incorporating both a top-down and bottom-up approach to its collection process of qualitative data. It explores identity among 12 of the “about two dozen ‘divided nations’ or ethnic groups that have found themselves on both sides of the new geopolitical ‘fence’” between “the main political dividing line that now splits the European continent” into “the European Union to the West” and the “NIS (Newly Independent States)” of the erstwhile Soviet Union to the East (p. 4).

These 12 “divided nations” are:

Belarussians in Lithuania Belarussians in Poland Hungarians in Slovakia Hungarians in Ukraine Lithuanians in Russia (Kaliningrad) Poles in Belarus Poles in Lithuania Poles in Ukraine Russians in Latvia Russians in Lithuania Slovaks in Hungary Ukrainians in Poland 40

Of these, the Russians in Latvia are by far the most substantial minority by population in their “host” country (this is the paper’s wording), being 29.6% of the Latvian population at the time; this is far ahead of the proportion of Hungarians in Slovakia, the next most relatively populous minority, at 9.5% of the population (p. 5). The paper refers to these proportions as “ethnic density” (p. 6).

The collaborators of the project applied extensive weighting and filtering to achieve “a systematic representation of at least 75% of each researched ethnic minority group” (p. 6). The process of data collection was commissioned to in-country sociological agencies, and took place over the winter period of 2009/10. Regarding the age of participants, the authors make the wise observation that, in the post-Soviet space especially, the lived experience of generations might vary considerably, and as such internally splits its approach to the age demographic thus:

1. The young generation who were born and brought up in the post-communist era (16 to 22 years old) 2. The middle generation who experienced the transition and are older enough to be the parents of the younger generation (35 to 50 years old) 3. The older generation who would have experienced the Second World War (65 years and older)

ENRI-EAST also proposes a “hierarchy” of studied ‘objects’ in its research (p. 19).

These are:

1. The meta-level object 2. The first operational level object 3. The next analytical level

These are each defined as:

1. The eastern area of the new European borderland 2. The sub-regions of the above area, namely: a. Baltic Region b. Eastern Europe c. Central Eastern Europe 3. Individual countries and ethnic groups 41

The report embarks upon a brief review of the literature and ideas behind nationalism and identity at the national, regional, and ‘European’ levels, before presenting the following findings.

Regarding attitudes toward the European Union, the study finds that: “the respondents’ image of the European Union is highly correlated with their attitudes regarding the (potential) benefit that their resident country has from being an EU member” and that Russians in Latvia were, in relative terms, very negative about the EU in this sense, while Russians in Lithuania were much closer to the mean response across the minorities (pp. 11-12).

Furthermore, “in general, the young respondents were more oriented towards Europe” (p. 12). However, there was difference in the respondents’ interpretation of exactly what they meant by attachment to ‘Europe’, with some groups identifying more with ‘Europe’ as specifically ‘Eastern Europe’ than the continent as a whole – the paper also noted the finding that Russian respondents (without delineating those in Latvia and Lithuania) reacted more negatively than the mean towards a perceived attachment towards ‘Eastern Europe’, implying their attachment to ‘Europe’ is either more idealistic than spatial, or perhaps mirroring the ‘Northern European’ identity that the Baltic republics foster in the post-Soviet era (Ilves 1999; Ociepka 2018, 206).

Regarding preferred components of identity (defined as “salient characteristics individuals or groups use to describe their “self” or are used by others to position them within the social order”) Russians in both Latvia and Lithuania are less inclined than the study mean to identify themselves by ethno-national and geographical factors, and instead more likely to identify themselves according to socio-political standing, age and gender (p. 23). Across all minority groups, the defined ‘Youth’ post-Soviet-born generation is markedly more likely to associate themselves by age and gender than by other factors. This component of the study also reports that, along with Hungarians in Ukraine and Slovakia, and Poles in Lithuania, Russians in Latvia and Lithuania “share the feeling that they have lost their former status as a ruling nation” (p. 23-24).

Regarding self-reported socio-spatial associations (Respondents feel close to…: the settlements they live in; their ethnicity; their “Host” country; .their country of “Ethnic Origin”; Europe; Eastern Europe), Russians in both Latvia and Lithuania – with little discernible difference between the two sets – most notably show higher-than-average attachment to “Country of Origin”, and lower-than-average attachment to both Europe and Eastern Europe as markers of 42 identity. This means that they are defining themselves more exclusively as ‘Russian’, not as Latvian, not as Lithuanian, nor (Eastern) European (p. 24).

Russian respondents in the study once again stand out in the section on preferred language use: along with Hungarian respondents in Slovakia and Ukraine, they are the respondents who “appear to be most adamant to use their own mother tongue as far as this is possible in every- day interactions” (p. 25). Another notable group in this regard is Lithuanians in Kaliningrad Oblast, who reportedly prefer to speak Russian at home over Lithuanian; clearly, the Russian language holds the strongest cultural allure amongst minorities in the Baltic.

However, the report then takes pains to elaborate that attachment to one’s ‘native’ language over that of their resident nationality does not correlate with a sense of attachment to the ‘native’ country over the ‘host’ that the minority resides in. On the contrary:

… With the exception of Hungarians in Ukraine and Slovakia, all minorities are much more “at home” in their host countries than in their countries of ethnic origin. They are more interested in “home affairs” than in events in their kin country … Needless to say, they regard themselves loyal citizens of their host countries. (p. 26)

Russians in Latvia (and Lithuania) are no exception in this regard. One notable finding from this section of the report is that of all the groups, none opt for adapting and assimilating to their ‘host’ country (over making effort to preserve one’s customs and traditions) more than the community of Lithuanians living in Kaliningrad. However, Russians in Latvia (and Lithuania) are more likely than the study’s mean average to report perceived harassment and alienation directed against them and their ethnic group in their resident country; when pressed to provide concrete examples occurring in the past 12 months, Russians in Lithuania report at the level of the data-set mean, while Russians in Latvia report with greater frequency than the data-set mean (p. 27). Across all minority groups, these concrete examples are cited more frequently in informal ‘civil’ environments (e.g. on the street, at the shops etc.) than in formal ‘civic’ locations with some level of government oversight (e.g. at schools, universities). Russians in Lithuania report lower levels of ‘civic’ (government) discrimination than their Belarussian and Polish counterparts in Lithuania. Lithuanians in Kaliningrad report lower-than-average ‘civic’ harassment, perhaps suggesting that the strategy of cultural ‘adaptation’ (p. 28) is vocational.

The report finds that “for most minority members, Europe and the EU provide no emotional point of reference” while the EU is generally viewed in a more positive light by minorities in the non-EU countries surveyed than by minorities of the EU countries surveyed (p. 29). 43

Between Russians in Latvia, and Russians in Lithuania, there is a stark discrepancy in feedback about the European Union. Russians in Lithuania are more than twice as likely to report positive sentiment than Russians in Latvia – 38% vs. 16% positive sentiment; 16% vs. 45% negative sentiment. This also means that Russians in Latvia are more certain of their opinion about the EU, with fewer providing a ‘neutral’ answer. Russians in both countries, however, are the least likely of all minority groups surveyed to report that their resident country joining the EU has provided a benefit to them and their communities (with regard to cultural recognition of the ethnicity and acceptance of the minority’s political desires).

Russians in Latvia and Lithuania also report the low levels of trust in their resident country’s police, media, government and parliament– Russians in Latvia report lowest out of all minority groups surveyed (p. 30). This final indicator (low trust in parliament – only 9% of Russians in Latvia trust it) is no doubt fed in part by the fact that at the time of the report’s writing, over 40% of the respondents surveyed were ineligible to vote in either national or European elections (p. 30); this is likely due to the ‘non-citizenship’ civic structure in Latvia that was still fully in place at the time (see above).

Finally, Russians in Latvia and Lithuania report lower-than-average participation in civil society organizations, such as cultural NGOs (e.g. church attendance, community center participation), relative to all groups (p. 31).

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Data Analysis This chapter provides original analysis to the data findings of the selected reports within the context of the research question of this paper.

5.1 Eurobarometer 92 (2019) The findings of both constituent parts of this Eurobarometer – as above – are interesting with respect to the two selected countries here; however, the results highlight the potential need for the Standard Eurobarometer format to incorporate a greater level of detail and establish more comprehensive methodologies that greater elucidate the backgrounds of respondents.

For example, the finding that attachment to the EU in Latvia is reported as significantly stronger than in Estonia or the EU as a whole presents an interesting point of comparison: however, we cannot deduce from this report alone whether the discrepancy is coming from ethnic Latvians, Russians, or other minorities in Latvia. This is not to say that the Eurobarometer methodology does not strive to accurately present representational data across all demographic factors, including ethnicity, age, gender, and socio-economic background. The report details its methodological framework clearly (p. TS2) as a carefully weighted distribution balanced by random probability. The problem is that ethnicity is one of the factors not more clearly elucidated in the paper’s data breakdown over individual question results. The paper’s methodology provides greater detail on respondents’ age, gender, education level and income regarding certain questions, but only does so for 10 of the 28 countries involved (UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Cyprus), justifying its choice as these are the six ‘major’ countries of the EU (in 2019) and four additional member states who most benefit from funding support post-2008. If such a term were to exist, this could reasonably be termed ‘methodological Othering’ in the data collection process: declaring that which is important and natural to report on from the Commission’s perspective, and that which is peripheral and less systemically ‘core’.

As Duchesne and Frognier (1995, 194) observe that “‘European identity’ does not emerge ‘ex nihilo’ but, rather, is built on the basis of existing identities – particularly, of course, national identities” held by citizens in each EU member state; the writings of Kohli (2000) contest this. It is therefore worth exploring the extent to which the “existing identities” of such a substantial community as the Russians in Latvia and Estonia feed into their responses in these Eurobarometer surveys. At a quarter of the population of each country, this is surely warranted. 45

The Eurobarometer surveys used to have a Central and Eastern Eurobarometer series between 1990 and 1998. Why not revive it, with a more in-depth elaboration on the issues facing the citizens of these countries, especially when so many are now EU member states?

In the Eurobarometer 92 Citizenship report, Latvia ranks as a highly enthusiastic proponent of the EU (pp. 12-13), second only to Luxembourg, which has a much longer history and central role within it. This discrepancy with the more mundane response from Estonian respondents begs the question: given their similar Russian minority demographics, where is the difference coming from?

Likewise, there is the extremely interesting double point of data that respondents in Latvia are much more positive about the EU as an idea, yet respondents in Estonia are notably more likely to say that they ‘feel’ that they are a citizen of it in practice. Due to the historical context of non-citizenship in both these countries, would it be unreasonable to hypothesize that the difference in opinion here could have arisen predominantly from the Russian minority communities, instead of the ethnic majorities in each country? If Russians in Latvia feel more disenfranchised and civically impeded by the history of non-citizenship than Russians in Estonia do, but yet still hold higher enthusiasm for the EU in theory, then it would be logical for the data to appear thus. Yet it is not clear which of the selected respondents (by background) are providing the varying feedback across the two questions. Given the political history of the Russian minorities in Estonia and Latvia, understanding in more depth the precise reasons for the divergent responses to these two particular questions could be highly informative for politicians and civil servants in Brussels, Riga, and Tallinn alike.

5.2 GESIS – ISSP 2013 (2015) Whereas the Eurobarometer format demonstrates the potential need for greater detail in the source(s) of the data it puts forward, the ISSP provides it, which allows for better insight with regards to the interests of this paper.

It would be presumptive and wrong to assume that the ethnic Russians who live in Estonia and Latvia would provide similar answers to their ethnic counterparts in Russia based on a shared ethnic background alone, especially given academic literature pointing to the complexity and “hybridity” of identities present in these communities in the Baltic (Ociepka 2018; Kohli 2000, 113). With regard to questions focusing on attachment to geographic locales and civic polities, their lived experiences and environments may be so radically different, with such stark 46 discrepancies between the spatial scale and political systems of the Russian Federation, Estonia and Latvia, that responses cannot be assumed to correlate for these reasons either. However, the inclusion of Russia in the GESIS study does provide as close to what this paper may consider a ‘control group’ that its inclusion in this paper’s analysis can be considered worthwhile and valid.

One can condense the data findings listed above in Chapter 4.2 to produce a ranking of aggregate positive-negative sentiment at three geographical levels across the three countries.

‘Closeness’ to city: 1. Estonia 2. Latvia 3. Russia

‘Closeness’ to country: 1. Estonia 2. Latvia 3. Russia

‘Closeness’ to continent: 1. Estonia 2. Latvia 3. Russia

At all three questioned levels of attachment, a pattern of enthusiasm clearly emerged. Respondents in Estonia report the highest aggregate positive feeling towards the locality where they live, towards the country they live in, and towards Europe, with the Russian respondents showing the least. With the ISSP’s methodology established as being broadly representative of the demographic profiles of the three countries, one can then assume that this data accurately reflects sentiment across both ethnic majority and minority communities, with even geographic spread too. As such, it is possible to conclude from this data that Russians in Estonia feel greater positive sentiment and ‘closeness’ towards where they live than Russians in Latvia, who in turn feel greater positive sentiment and ‘closeness’ towards where they live than Russians in Russia. This would suggest at first inspection that perceived Othering in Estonia is lesser than in Latvia, 47 if it is present in either country at all (from this data), as ethnic Russian respondents are implicitly reporting a greater sense of being ‘at home’ in the Baltic states than their fellow counterparts are in the Russian Federation itself. However, without clearer elaboration of the underlying data, it would be academically foolish to assert this from these data alone.

5.3 ENRI-EAST (2011) One theme of the data that stands out is the point that associations with the EU were correlated with the perceived benefit that membership of it had had on the country’s economy and protection of the ethnic minority’s cultural rights and freedoms. The latter may well be incumbent upon the former, as funding for certain cultural projects or official translations into Russian would be incumbent upon the wider fiscal and economic profile as a whole. It has to be remembered that these surveys were conducted in 2009/10, in the immediate aftermath of the great financial crisis of 2008/09, and the world, Europe, and the Baltic states in particular were still reeling from the fallout of it. Lithuania’s economic performance had/has been stronger than that of Latvia, and this factor may well be playing out in the data regarding attachment to the EU as a whole. It is also worth noting that Latvia and Lithuania only joined the EU in 2004, and as such the tangible results of European Union support may not have been fully realized by the time of this study.

The report produced by this study represents the data available that most closely and explicitly aligns with this paper’s academic line of enquiry. It certainly brings interesting findings regarding the Russian minorities when compared from Latvia to Lithuania, and, though not directly examined here, the data on Lithuanians in Kaliningrad sheds some light on levels of perceived Othering and European identity ‘in reverse’ between Russia and the Baltic. It is unfortunate that the Russia minority in Estonia was not included in the study – perhaps the authors assumed the results yielded would measure highly closely with those of Latvia, due to the similar demographic proportions and the comparatively similar history of non-citizenship and contentions over official linguistic usage?

The rejection of the label of ‘Eastern European’ as an associated term for Russians in Latvia aligns with the findings of Iver B. Neumann, who over 20 years ago claimed that ‘the East’ has been “cut loose from its geographical point of reference and has become a generalized social marker in European identity formation” (Neumann 1999, 65). If ‘the East’ is no longer a geographic nomination, but rather a reference point for social identity, then it becomes apparent from the above data that Russians in Latvia (perhaps in Estonia too?) are seeking to position 48 themselves in the wider European social milieu as being on the side of ‘West’, of ‘not-East’; this would suggest some sense of leaning towards the European (Union) identity as understood by countries further west than the Baltic region.

The existence and completion of the ENRI-EAST Project demonstrates that the issue of Othered minority voices going unheard in ‘New Europe’ has not escaped the attention of the European Commission. Nor can the academic fields of ‘European Studies’ and ‘Russian & Eurasian Studies’ be denied to be rich and established in their literatures. However, the fact that the ENRI-EAST Project can at best reflect realities a decade old indicates that this intersection of the two fields might need renewed interest, a revival, a new rendition of the investigation. Its initial findings indicated that Russians in Latvia had especially low trust and belief in their national government and local civic structures, even compared with other minorities in Central and Eastern Europe. That the project has not been renewed, even for a ’10 Years On’ review, is curious. In fact, the project’s report’s online license has since its publication expired and the URL been replaced with an unrelated Chinese website. While not buried, even the old data is harder than necessary to find. This particularly interesting line of academic inquiry – not to mention highly useful political knowledge – appears, unfortunately, to be languishing. So much has changed worldwide since this study was conducted, and the fortunes of the Baltic states and its inhabitants have markedly improved from an economic standpoint, that it is surely worth considering asking the same questions again to observe what – if anything – has changed in the minds of these ethnic minority groups in the decade that has since passed.

5.4 Summary Cross-Examination of Findings When the research question of this paper asks: “are minority communities (in this case: Russians in Latvia and Estonia) ‘Othered’ in the space between academic and policy research?”, this is not implying that the direct conductors of the surveys such as those reviewed above, or researchers at universities and other academic institutions are deliberately seeking to alienate, prejudice, or other cast as lesser these minority communities. This is ostensibly far from the actual case. Rather, the ‘Othering’ questioned here is mused in the methodologies pursued by researchers, from both angles. Is policy research in this field too broad, too ‘top-down’? Conversely, is academic research in this field too narrow, too local, too ‘bottom-up’?

If Maley (1995) was able to show that Russians in the Baltic viewed the governments of Latvia and Estonia as ‘better’ than that of Russia, could similar research not be performed today that 49 not only compares perceptions of national governments’ competence over Russia’s, but also compares Baltic Russians’ perceptions of the European Union as a supra-national governing entity compared to the Russian Federation as a multi-national governing entity? Would such research not be highly useful to Brussels administrators and think tank writers alike? In fact, in the name of balance, one can observe that such research would be useful to politicians, civil servants and researchers in Moscow too. Likewise, if Mikeladze (2009, 467) can isolate and identify “the construction of the image of a ‘national enemy’” amongst Latvians and Estonians against the Russian population as being particularly “problematic” for civil discourse, would there not be benefit from pursuing this line of enquiry further, extrapolating the logic, and testing to see if Russians across the EU are perceived as a “supra-national enemy” when they are living within the EU’s borders? In the context of contemporary EU-Russia diplomatic relations, are the Russian diaspora therefore considered “potential fifth columns” to be neutralized (Clemens, Jr. 1998, 710), or not? Would there be a difference of opinion on this matter across EU member states, reflecting Cold War political demarcations, or have the people of Europe now transcended those old lines of Othering?

These are the types of questions that this thesis maintains are going unanswered in the ‘space’ between academic and policy research. As can be seen by the prevalence of ‘immigration’ issues in the Eurobarometer series, questions of who is ‘native’ and who is ‘Other’, who belongs and who does not, are highly pertinent to many living in the European Union today. If Europe as a whole, and the EU in particular, is ever to transcend “the negative self-other divisions between East and West of the Cold War” (Browning 2003, 45) that it has inherited from that era, then it must surely also seek to more clearly identify where these divisions still exist through its published research.

A cross-analysis of the data-sets above reveals some further ground to be explored. For example: the GESIS study shows that feelings of ‘attachment’ to any level of government or geography appear to be lower in Russia than in either Latvia or Estonia. With that being the case, one could (blindly) extrapolate that this data shows Russians to be less attached, as they are the dominant response group from that country. Therefore, one could ask the question: are Russians in Latvia and Estonia less ‘attached’ to where they live than Latvians and Estonians? If so, why are they not bringing down reported feelings of attachment to the EU in the Eurobarometer 92 report(s)? This question is especially interesting given how high Latvia scores on EU attachment relative to all other member states, despite Russians (who – per GESIS 50

– ought to predictably be less ‘attached’ to ‘Europe’) constituting roughly one quarter of the Latvian population. However, this Russian proportion of the national demographic is also comparable in Estonia, so whence is the discrepancy in attachment to the EU between both countries? Perhaps – Russians in Estonia feel remarkably less attached to the EU than Russians in Latvia; perhaps – Latvians are simply much more pro-EU than Estonians; perhaps – it is a combination of the above. Without more detailed clarification(s) from the reports sources about the origin(s) of certain responses, it is hard to say. What can be asserted is that it would be beneficial to know the answer.

Furthermore, a notable point of comparison can be made between the GESIS questions on European attachment (asked in 2013) and their counterpart equivalent questions posed by Eurobarometer 92 (asked in 2019). Only 40% of Estonians and 25% of Latvians say they feel attached to ‘their continent’, while 60% of Estonians and 75% of Latvians say they feel attached to ‘Europe’. This comparison would appear to show at least one of three things: either the two studies are surveying drastically different samples of each national population (which is unlikely, as GESIS performs surveys with Eurobarometer, so their methodologies ought to be of similar quality); or statistically similar respondents had a radical upgrade in their estimation of ‘their continent / Europe’ in the time passed between the two studies (not implausible, but unlikely again); or, the term ‘Europe’ elicits a specifically positive response in the minds of people surveyed, whatever their background, and this accounts for the drastic increase in reported positive attachment to ‘Europe’ over ‘my continent’ (this seems the most likely reason). Further research – which is surely necessary in light of this finding – could have profound implications for understanding ‘Europeanization’ in these two countries, or also across the continent and the European Union.

51

Conclusion This paper finds that there is room to explore European identity – its essence, perceptions and understandings – amongst the ethnic Russian communities of Latvia and Estonia, who constitute considerable minority populations of these states. While extensive research has clearly been done at the national level by both the European Commission and commissioned social science survey institutes in the field of European and national identities, as well as a plethora of academic chapters, books and journal articles, these minority communities appear to be being surveyed as part of a wider national data-set with majority-population Latvians and Estonians, instead of being surveyed independently. In the case where a major research project did seek to understand these minority groups (ENRI-EAST), the authors chose to focus on Latvia and Lithuania, neglecting Estonia, instead of exploring Russian communities all three countries, or focusing on the two largest Russian populations, as this paper has elected to do.

Set against an historic discourse of Russia “represented as just having been tamed, civil, civilised, just having begun to participate in European politics, just having become part of Europe … perpetually seen as being in some stage of transition to Europeanisation” (Neumann 1998) and “a (Western) European legacy that constitutes Europe as a unified civilisational empire” which “offers Russia the option, either of being imperialised within its folds, or alternatively remaining marginalised on the periphery of Europe” (Browning 2003, 45), it stands to reason to test and question research methodologies that concern the representational territories of both Europe and Russia. Despite the fact that – in serious terms – the Russian inhabitants of Daugavpils, Narva, or similar locales are not likely a “destabilising fifth column” and “eastern Estonia and Latvia are by no means comparable to the Donbas” (Stoicescu 2015, 4), “the Baltic States' political identity is constituted mainly within the framework of the meanings of nation-state discourse characterised by the East-West opposition.”(Miniotaite 2003, 209) and the more removed from ‘the East’ these Russian diaspora communities present themselves as – to themselves and exogenous sources – the more in tune with the discourse of ‘the West’ they inevitably become. Therefore, there is a tension fighting to be resolved in this space, both geographic and ideological, that current research appears to be missing.

Academia is about striving to ask the right questions, and making intelligent interpretations of the answers found from asking them. Collection of data for the purposes of policy is about striving to see a pattern in the numbers, and thence deriving a narrative by which better governing policy can be attained, thus answering the responses (implicit desires) asked of the 52 citizenry in the questions of the research. This paper has sought to ask a ‘right’ question by investigating the extent to which, while clearly not ignored by policymakers or academics coming from their respective angles, the Russians of Latvia and Estonia are nevertheless ‘missed’ in the ‘gap’ between top-down and bottom-up literature. It proposes a new approach to this crossroads of research, one that focuses specifically on ‘European’ identity across parallel Othered minority ethnic groups across the European Union, whose ‘Europeanness’ is questioned; this could include, for example, Romani communities in Slovakia, or Turks living in Greece. The perceived dichotomy between ‘European’ and ‘Other’ has not simply disappeared in the 21st Century – this is an issue that we should all seek to address.

Finally, one last point can be made in response to the research question: Othering can be cast in the eye of the beholder – or in this case, the reader. When anyone reads these policy reports, even with their methodologies laid out in appendices, there is a natural inclination in the minds of many (and it is not necessarily malicious) to assume that responses from a given country are those of the dominant ethnic majority there. For example, a reader might see responses from Spain as indicative of the feelings of ‘Spanish people’, not necessarily encompassing those who identify as Spanish, Catalan, Moroccan, Chinese, or of mixed heritage. Moreover, we tend to subconsciously imprint our self (or Self) onto the (sense-)data that our brain receives, swapping our ego in for the place of another (or an Other): an academic seeks clear, focussed, local findings, so that is what they find; a politician seeks broad, sweeping data from policy reports that can be easily pitched in a manifesto, so that is what they find. This is how this ‘research gap’ can be formed. Confirmation bias is both a symptom and a root cause in the creation of the Other. If a cynic wished to argue against this paper’s conclusion and claim that these methodologies do not Other minorities, one could counter that the presentation of data produces subliminal Othering.

53

Limitations Identity is a tricky subject, as for different people it can be mono- or multifaceted and felt with different intensities at different times. The response given by an individual to a survey on ‘identity’ in any form can be subconsciously influenced by present circumstances in that person’s life. This could be as subtle as the respondent having subconsciously noted a negative headline about the European Union in that morning’s newspapers, or feeling especially good about their country due to a victory in a sports event the previous night. Likewise, research and surveys on Othering face the same issue. Someone who in the past few days perceived that they had faced some form of unpleasant discrimination might give a more assertive response that they experienced ‘Othering’ than had the same question been asked of them a week or a month before. Of course, implicit acknowledgement of this is captured in the double question posed to those surveyed in the ENRI-EAST report (pp. 27-28) regarding perceived harassment compared to concrete examples of it recently happening. This is a good method for future research into Othering in the Baltic (or anywhere else, for that matter) to create a control for questions about self-declared perceptions of being Othered.

Furthermore, this paper recognizes that the production of original data through a ‘research synthesis’ meta-analytic approach of extant data is by nature limited in scope. However, this does not mean to say that this paper’s scope for the production of new knowledge is limited. This paper seeks to present the case that there is potentially fruitful ground for future research in exploring multi-layered civic identities amongst this Russian minority community and any others.

Finally, this paper laments the difficulty in performing primary research on this thesis’ subject matter in the first six months of 2020, and recognizes that similar challenges in fieldwork may be encountered in the near-term future. Indeed, there is a very real possibility that the new uncertainty around public health created by the events of 2020 will create new social realities that affect degrees of Othering. In high likelihood, this means that the historical experiences of traditionally Othered individuals and communities may well be exacerbated by new forms of social distancing, and as such perceptions of being Othered may well be perpetuated, or even worsened. This potential new psychological paradigm would need to be considered by future research in this field.

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Implications From the conclusions of this paper, the following hypotheses can be made for future research to test:

- A self-reported feeling of ‘European’ identity is more commonly found amongst younger ethnic Russians (especially the aged 16-22 ‘post-Soviet’ generation) in Latvia and Estonia. - A self-reported feeling of ‘European’ identity is more commonly found amongst those with higher educational attainment than those with lower educational attainment. - A self-reported feeling of ‘European’ identity is more commonly found amongst those of a wealthier socio-economic background than those from a less privileged background. - A self-reported feeling of ‘European’ identity is more commonly found amongst ethnic Russians holding Latvian or Estonian passports than those with Russian passports. - A self-reported feeling of ‘European’ identity is more commonly found amongst ethnic Latvians and Estonians than amongst ethnic Russians. - A self-reported perception of being Othered is more prominent amongst ethnic Russians of a less privileged socioeconomic background than amongst their more privileged peers. - Russians may feel more ‘left behind’ in Estonia than in Latvia, owing to generally higher economic growth in Estonia, and therefore a greater likelihood of traditionally disenfranchised minorities not reaping the full benefits that this growth has brought.

These predictions are formed from a synthesis of the report data analyzed above, as well as referenced findings from research (especially from present and previous Eurobarometer series) into correlates of ‘European’ identity in the context of the European Union. Furthermore, beyond national lines, Schilde identifies that “the individual-level predictors of European identity identified in EU-15 countries – high education, knowledge, urbanism, white-collar economic class, cognitive mobilization and youth – are all correlates of European identification” (2014, 651). The ‘EU-15’ effectively encapsulates ‘Old Europe’ before the 2004 and post-2004 ‘New Europe’ enlargements of the EU. Therefore, these correlates are likely to be found in future research in the areas above – if not, that would be an interesting finding in itself and would present a challenge to the present orthodoxy of the established literature today.

If acted upon properly, the potential positive implications for this and future research are a higher level, greater degree, or more nuanced variant of bilateral engagement between EU structures and the Russian communities of Latvia and Estonia, furthering their feeling of social, political, and cultural prominence, and the sense of ‘belonging’ within the European Union. 55

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