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Home , Constitution of Latvia, Education in Latvia, Latvian language, The Case for Latvia

Linköping | Department of Management and Engineering Master’ thesis, 30 credits| Master’s programme in Political Science Spring 2020 | LIU-IEI-FIL-A--20/03441--SE

Latvian Language Policy – Unifying or Polarizing?

- Reconstructing the Political Debate on Language Reform in the Latvian System

Samuel Holm

Supervisor: Khalid Khayati Examiner: Mikael Rundqvist

Word : 24 770

Linköping University SE-581 83 Linköping +46 013- 28 10 00, www.liu.se

Abstract Languages are not just systems for communication, they are also often a marker of ethnic and/or national identity and sometimes a politically contentious issue. A country where this is the case is , which has a large Russian-speaking population. During the occupation of Latvia, Russian became the dominant language in public life. Since regaining independence, Latvia has pursued language policies aimed at strengthening the position of the , at the expense of the Russian. Latvian is the single and over the last decades, the system inherited from the has moved towards an increasing share of Latvian as the language of instruction. In 2018, the Latvian amended two educational laws, meaning the share of subjects being instructed in Latvian in so-called minority schools increased markedly. The decision was controversial and was opposed by parties with a large Russian-speaking voter base.

The purpose of the thesis is twofold. The first is to describe and analyse the arguments of political actors1 regarding mono- and multilingual education, focusing on the reform of 2018. The arguments will be analysed in relation to theory regarding the connection between nationalism/nationhood and language, and theory on linguistic minority rights.

The second part of the purpose is to advocate normatively and constructively for an approach regarding two different areas of policy: 1) Whether Russian should be an official language or not. 2) Language policy in education. The point of departure for the analysis is the aspiration to create a sense of national belonging, where both Russian-speakers and Latvian-speakers are seen as a part of the Latvian imagined community. In order to create this sense of inclusive imagined community, the approach seeks to be impartial in relation to the “pro-Latvian” and “pro-minority” positions with regards to language policy. The normative argumentation also seeks to include and balance the values of linguistic minority rights and preserving small languages (such as Latvian).

For the first part of the thesis, a descriptive idea analysis is applied. The arguments are analysed in relation to my theoretical framework, which consists of various concepts relating to the relationship between language and nationalism and models regarding linguistic rights. The main analytical tool is the concept of an imagined community, where a sense of national belonging and social cohesion can be based on either mono- or multilingualism. In the second part, a normative and constructive method is used to argue for my position in a systematic fashion.

The arguments of the proponents of the 2018 reform can be described as based on the idea that Latvian is the common and unifying language of all the Latvian residents and one of the foundations of the imagined Latvian community. At the same time, the proponents claim wanting to ensure that members of linguistic minorities can preserve their language, and that the reform provides the right to learn a minority language. The opponents of the reform argue that, while it is important that students learn the Latvian language, drastically decreasing the level of instruction is an assimilatory policy that will weaken rather than strengthen the national .

In the second part, the author suggests that Latvian will remain the single official language since granting the official status may cause the language decline of Latvian, and because the issue is very divisive. In terms of language in the school system, the author concludes that Latvian ought to have a special position in Latvia and should therefore be the dominant language. Therefore, Latvian should be the main language of instruction, in the proportions prescribed by the 2018 reform. Another

1 Specified under “Delimitations”.

conclusion is that all students, regardless of tongue, should learn Russian on at least an elementary level.

Contents List of terms and abbreviations ...... 6 1. Introduction ...... 7 1.1 Introducing the topic of research ...... 7 1.2 Aim & purpose ...... 9 1.3 Delimitations ...... 10 1.4 Relevancy and contribution ...... 11 1.5 Linguistic and ethnic composition of Latvia ...... 12 1.6 Language law and policy in Latvia ...... 13 1.6.1 Official Language Law ...... 13 1.6.2.The of Latvia ...... 13 1.6.3 Education Law and General Education Law ...... 14 1.7 Parliamentary and ruling parties ...... 14 1.8 The reform regarding language of instruction ...... 15 1.9 Disposition ...... 15 2. Previous research ...... 16 2.1 Research about Latvia ...... 16 2.2 Language and nationalism ...... 18 2.3 Monolingualism and multilingualism ...... 19 3.Theory ...... 20 3.1 Imagined communities ...... 20 3.1.1 Applying “imagined community” as an analytical tool...... 22 3.1.2 Defining monolingualism and multilingualism ...... 22 3.2 The role of language ...... 23 3.3 Language and power ...... 23 3.4 Nationalism and education...... 25 3.5 Language rights – tolerance or promotion? ...... 25 3.6 Six stages of linguistic minority rights ...... 26 4. Methodological outlines and material ...... 28 4.1 Descriptive idea analysis ...... 28 4.2 Qualitative interviews...... 29 4.3 Articles ...... 31 4.4 Normative and constructive method ...... 32 4.4.1 Values and points of departure ...... 32 4.4.2 Ensuring validity...... 32 4.4.3 Not only normative, also constructive ...... 34

4.4.4 What kind of normative analysis? ...... 34 4.5 Structure of analysis ...... 35 4.6 Critical discussion regarding method and material ...... 35 4.6.1 Translation ...... 35 4.6.2 Sources ...... 36 4.6.3 Choosing material ...... 36 5. Results and analysis ...... 38 5.1 Part 1 – Proponents ...... 38 5.1.1 Latvian – the unifying language ...... 38 5.1.2 View on linguistic minority rights ...... 41 5.1.3 Learning Latvian – the key to equal opportunities ...... 43 5.2 Part 2 – Opponents ...... 45 5.2.1 “Latvian only” threatens the social cohesion ...... 45 5.2.2 Study results will fall – not equal opportunities ...... 47 5.2.3 Alternative vision for languages of instruction ...... 47 5.3 Part 3 - Normative and constructive approach ...... 50 5.3.1 The role of language in creating national unity ...... 50 5.3.2 Making Russian a co-official language? ...... 51 5.3.3 Educational approach ...... 52 6. Discussion and conclusions ...... 54 References ...... 57 Books and articles ...... 57 Internet sources...... 59 Figures ...... 63 Interview and email correspondence ...... 64 Appendix 1 – Interview guides ...... 65 Appendix 2 – List of material used in the descriptive analysis ...... 68

List of terms and abbreviations Ethnie – term of Anthony , defined as "named units of population with common ancestry myths and historical memories, elements of shared culture, some link with a historic territory and some measure of solidarity, at least among their elites"2. In this thesis, the term ethnicity/ethnic refers to the same thing as ethnie.

Language policy – in this thesis, the term is used broadly and refers to regulations and laws.

Latvian-speakers/Latvian-speaking - In this thesis these terms refer to someone with Latvian as their native language.

Latviešu valoda – Latvian: “Latvian language”.

Nation – In this thesis, the author uses this term to refer to the political nation, or nation-state. When used by Latvian politicians and/or from a source originally in Latvian, it may have a different meaning, not least because the Latvian term for nationality, tautība, also corresponds to “ethnicity”.

Russian-speakers/ Russian-speaking – In this thesis these terms refer to someone with Russian as their native language.

Valsts valoda – Latvian: “state language”, has the same meaning as “official language”.

The terms “native language”, “first language” and “mother tongue” are used interchangeably in this thesis.

(AP!) – Attīstībai/Par! (Social liberal party)

(JKP) – Jaunā konservatīvā partija (Conservative party)

(LKS) – Latvijas Krievu savienība (Left-Wing, pro-Russian minority party)

(LRA) – Latvijas Reģionu apvienība (Centrist, regionalist party)

MFA – Ministry of Foreign Affairs

MoES – Ministry of Science and Education

MP - Member of Parliament

(NA) – Nacionālā apvienība "Visu Latvijai!"—"Tēvzemei un Brīvībai/LNNK" (Nationalist party)

(S) – Saskaņa (Social Democratic Party, pro-Russian minority party)

(V/JV) – Vienotība/Jauna Vienotība (Centre-right, liberal-conservative party)

VISC - Valsts izglītības satura centrs (National Centre for Education of the of Latvia)

(ZZS) – Zaļo un Zemnieku savienība (Centre-right; agrarian, green conservative party)

2 Smith (1995) p.57

6

1. Introduction Despite strong globalization, the nation-state is still in many ways the primary political unit in the world. How a state with a multi-ethnic population should deal with the different groups is a relevant issue within the field of political science. Is it desirable for a nation-state to be as ethnically and linguistically homogenous as possible, with a dominating majority-culture? Or, ought the nation-state to be multicultural? The point of departure for this thesis is the tension between phenomena such as nationhood, identity and languages. Specifically, the thesis will discuss Latvian language policy with regards to its linguistic minorities.

The chapter starts with introducing the topic of research. Then, the aim and research questions of the thesis are formulated, the delimitations are outlined and the relevancy motivated. This chapter also contains an overview of the demographics, contemporary Latvian language policy and the Latvian political landscape. The chapter ends with a more detailed outline of the implementation of the 2018 reform.

1.1 Introducing the topic of research During the almost 50 years that the Soviet Union occupied Latvia, the demographic composition changed drastically. This was largely due to an internal migration policy within the union that meant that many , and moved to Latvia. In 1935, 73 percent of the population was classified as ethnically Latvian, in 1989 the share had fallen to 52 percent.3 Latvia was also on the receiving end of a policy. Under the slogan of “merging the nations”4, the official purpose was “social and cultural unification of all ethnic groups on the basis of Soviet Russian culture”5. According to Khazanov and Silova, the real purpose was to assimilate the different ethnicities and establish Russian as a lingua franca in the Soviet Union.6 Hence, Russian became a mandatory second language for Latvian-speakers.7 According to Priedite, it was certainly possible to acquire education in Latvian, but in order to obtain ”highly qualified employment positions”8 or a doctoral degree one had to be proficient in Russian.9

In 1988, the Supreme Soviet of the Latvian SSR voted to make Latvian the official language of Latvia, alongside Russian. Four years later, it was decided that Latvian would be the only official language and in 1999 the State Language Law was adopted.10 Additionally, the status of the Latvian language was strengthened during the late 1990’s through a series of constitutional amendments, and in year 2000 different levels of language requirements were introduced for various professions.11 In 2012 Latvia held a referendum on making Russian the second official language. The “no-side” won convincingly.12

3 Kuczyńska-Zonik (2017) p.3 4 Khazanov (1995) in Cernakova (2014) p. 11 5 Khazanov (1995) refered to in Silova (2006) p. 36 (In turn, the author has found the quote in Cernakova (2014) p.11) 6 Khazanov (1995) and Silova (2006) in Cernakova (2014) p. 11 7 Silova (2006) in Cernakova (2014) p. 11 8 Priedite (2003) p. 1 9 Ibid. 10 Priedite (2003) pp. 3, 6-7. Hjertonsson (2001) p. 56 11Priedite (2003) p. 7 12 Druviete (2016) p. 1 7

As a part of the Soviet “heritage”, the independent Republic of Latvia, with regards to languages of instruction, has had two parallel education systems. At primary and secondary level there has been the “mainstream” of Latvian schools and so-called minority schools, where the language of instruction has been another language, primarily Russian. Since 2004, the minority schools are required to teach 60 percent of the subjects in Latvian, and the remaining 40 percent in the minority language. It was up to the schools themselves to decide which subjects they would teach in which language. Tendencies to strengthen the position of Latvian in minority schools began already in 1998. However, the reform that then started gave more room for flexibility: “each minority was offered a menu of four reform models that differed in the proportions of the respective languages of instruction as well as in the speed of implementation”.13 According to Pavlenko, a reform proposal passed already in 1998, which meant that all upper education should take place in Latvian starting 2004. However, the proposal met hard resistance and was revised to the "60/40 model".14 Furthermore, starting the school year of 2006/2007, all final exams at high school level had to be in Latvian. However, pupils had the right to answer in the school’s minority language, predominantly Russian, up until the school year 2017/2018.

On the 22nd of March 2018 the , the Latvian parliament, approved amendments to the Education Law and the General Education Law (hereafter referred to as “the 2018 reform”) in the final reading.15 The amendments meant that, at pre-school and primary school level, the share of topics/lessons that had to be instructed in Latvian (in minority schools) were markedly increased. At high school level all instruction must be in Latvian. However, the Latvian states that, in order to meet international obligations, national minorities will be “able to study minority language, literature and other subjects related to their culture and history in their native language.”16 This reform is implemented in different steps until the school year of 2020/2021. (The reform will be described in greater detail in section 1.8.) The reform has been politically controversial and has sparked considerable resistance from different parts of the Russian community, both outside and inside of Latvia.17 For instance, the Russian foreign affairs called the decision “odious”.18 In connection to this, it is worth mentioning that has accused Latvia “in international forums of violating the human rights of the minorities in their legislation on citizenship, language and schools.”19 Furthermore, according to Teodor, Russia has, in the post-Soviet period, been involved in “emotional exchanges over language-related issues and disagreements over language policies.”20 Inside Latvia, the party Saskana filed a lawsuit arguing the reform to be unconstitutional and discriminatory. In April 2019, the Constitutional Court ruled that the transition to instruction in the state language was constitutional.21 In September 2019, the ruling coalition decided to support the proposal of Nacionala Apvieniba (NA) to fully transition to Latvian as the sole language of instruction at all levels of education. However, when the full transition will take place is not certain and the discussion is ongoing.22

13 Ivlevs & King (2014) pp. 153-154 14 Pavlenko (2011) p. 43 15 www.lsm.lv (2018-03-23) 16 Latvia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2018-06-18) 17 lsm.lv (2018-03-23) , tass.com (2018-09-15), euroactive.com (2018-06-25) 18 NPR (2018-10-28) 19 UI (2010) 20 Teodor (2015-03-31) 21 lsm.lv (2019-04-23) 22 lsm.lv (2019-09-24), la.lv (2020-02-13) 8

The author is curious of how arguments in the debate surrounding the 2018 reform relates to different views on the relationship between language and nationalism, and linguistic minority rights. Different positions on issues regarding language policy in education is often connected to different views on the role of different languages in relation to the national identity.

Issues regarding minority rights and languages are often very politically sensitive in Latvia, and the author’s own experiences from living in Latvia informs him that the of the debate sometimes becomes polarizing and borderline irreconcilable. Therefore, the author also strives to offer a compromise-oriented approach on language policy that aims for including all linguistic groups in a sense of national belonging.

1.2 Aim & purpose The purpose of the thesis is twofold. The first is to describe and analyse the arguments of political actors23 regarding mono- and multilingual education, focusing on the reform of 2018. The arguments will be analysed in relation to theory regarding the connection between nationalism/nationhood and language, and theory on linguistic minority rights.

The second part of the purpose is to advocate normatively and constructively for an approach regarding two different areas of policy: 1) Whether Russian should be an official language or not. 2) Language policy in education. The point of departure for the analysis is the aspiration to create a sense of national belonging, where both Russian-speakers and Latvian-speakers are seen as a part of the Latvian imagined community. In order to create this sense of an inclusive imagined community, the approach seeks to be impartial in relation to the “pro-Latvian” and “pro-minority” positions with regards to language policy. The normative argumentation also seeks to include and balance the values of linguistic minority rights and preserving small languages (such as Latvian).

In order to fulfil the aim, I have formulated the following research questions:

1. How can we understand the arguments for and against the 2018 reform in relation to aforementioned theories? 2. How can the arguments of proponents and opponents be understood in relation to the concepts imagined community and national unity? 3. What can a normative and constructive approach with regards to official language and language policy in education, with the goal of creating an inclusive imagined community, look like?

The observant reader may see some overlap between the first and second question. The concept of imagined community is included in “aforementioned theories”, but the narrower scope of the second research question is used to bring focus to the main, or most central, concepts/themes of the theoretical framework.

23 Specified under “Delimitations”. 9

1.3 Delimitations The study object of the thesis is the Latvian language policy in the school system – from pre-school up to high school, and the focus will be on the 2018 reform. The reform will be studied through the way of studying the surrounding political debate. The ongoing discussions24 about further transition to instruction in Latvian will not be discussed in this thesis. However, in a few instances, the thesis contains material or opinions related to the ongoing discussion. When such material is used as a point of reference, the author will motivate why this was done.

Although the focus of this thesis is on the 2018 reform, it will be connected to the wider discussion of language policy, since it is a case of language policy. (Latvian) language policy is the field, the language- of-instruction reform is the specific case within this field.

The author will not focus on evaluating the perceived level of success of the reform. Furthermore, this thesis does not focus on the educational benefits and setbacks with different approaches to language policy, but rather on connecting views on language policy to (different) views of national unity and belonging.

It has been debated by the opponents and proponents whether the 2018 reform is in accordance with international regulations and conventions on rights of (linguistic) minorities. However, this will not be discussed in this thesis since the purpose is to describe the arguments in relation to nationalism, and analysing arguments about international conventions requires a different theoretical framework.

While the thesis includes a description regarding the government’s justification/motivation of the 2018 reform, the aim of the thesis is not to describe or explain the causes that led to the reform. Such an aim would call for another design, and, in order to be adequate, should examine what role different kinds of causes – economical, ideological, political etc. – had in the creation of the reform.

The empirical material is limited to political actors. For our purposes, this is defined as including parties in the Saeima (and one additional party, which is motivated in section 4.2). One reason for this is that the reform was a parliamentary decision. Additionally, government ministries are included in the definition. Since ministries are a part of the government, and the reform was passed by the parties included in, or supporting25 the, governing coalition, they are included as proponents. Specifically, the ministries for Education and Foreign Affairs are included since they have issued statements justifying the reform. Except parties and government ministries, the position of the Constitutional Court is also included. This is due to the fact that the constitutional court, while being a judicial rather than political actor, made a ruling in a case regarding the constitutionality of the reform.

Since Russian is, by far, the most widely spoken minority language in Latvia, and because Russian- speakers have arranged public protests, the thesis will focus on the Russian-speaking minority. This means that the arguments focus on Russian as a language of instruction, rather than minority languages in general. In the normative proposal, even though all minorities should be included in the imagined community, my discussion and recommendations focus exclusively on how to include the Russian- speaking community in the Latvian imagined community.

The normative part will propose an approach focusing on language policy for the education system, more specifically pre-school up to high school, since it is the stages of education that the 2018 reform

24 See under 1.1 25 At least on this particular issue. 10

concerns. However, since the issue of language policy in the education system is a part of the wider framework of language policy within a state, the normative analysis will also assess language policy on a more macro-level, i.. by discussing whether Russian should be a second official language. Highly detailed policy proposals are not given. Instead, the normative/constructive assessment is about proposing an inclusive and balanced approach to language policy.

The aspect of Russia’s foreign policy in relation to Latvian language policy is of relevance, but it will not be discussed in this thesis since it would require a different theoretical framework. Furthermore, including foreign actors in a thesis about a domestic political debate risks resulting in a thesis without a clear focus.

1.4 Relevancy and contribution The topic and aim are scientifically relevant because it examines a political discussion from the lens of nationalism and linguistic rights. The thesis describes different accounts on how a nation-state should ideally be demographically composed – linguistic (and cultural) homogeneity or diversity? The thesis also relates to aspects of national and minority identity: How does language policies affect the sense of national unity and social cohesion, and how does it affect the identity of linguistic minorities? What linguistic rights should minorities have?

The topic has societal relevance since the topic is controversial and sensitive and has been widely debated. The reform has also attracted criticism from the UN. 26 Also, there is a gap of research regarding Latvian language- and minority policy: there is no academic research about the education reform of 2018 and the surrounding debate.

Why is the Latvian case of reform, and the surrounding discussion, interesting? It is interesting because the Russian-speaking population is a rather big minority in a small country. There is also an interesting tension: Latvia is an example of a state with official monolingualism but claims it wants to preserve adequate rights for linguistic minorities. Why is the normative reasoning relevant? It is because the issue of the language reform is dividing the Latvian society. One purpose of this thesis is, as stated earlier, to offer something that brings it together.

The thesis’s contributions to the field of research are several. Through the theory-consuming approach I combine the classic concept of the imagined communities with other theories. The theory/theories applied are not novel, but methodologically speaking it is a new combination of concepts applied as a theoretical framework. The material partially consists of interviews with top politicians (an ex-minister, a party leader and an MP), which is a rather unique material in a master’s thesis on this subject. In terms of scientific theoretical perspective, the thesis uses a social constructivist approach. This affects the choice of theory – the concept of nations as imagined communities and theories asserting the constructed nature of “neutral” state languages and cultures. The political arguments are connected to assessments and opinions regarding for example identity, history and (geo)politics.

26 Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (2018-01-26), Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (2018) 11

The most significant contribution is to, departing from a specified set of values and making use of theoretical concepts and empirical data from the descriptive part of the study, create an own approach oriented at reconciliation and compromise in a sensitive issue.

1.5 Linguistic and ethnic composition of Latvia In 2017, 60.8 percent of the Latvian population had Latvian as their native language, 36.0 percent Russian and 3.2 percent another mother tongue. Since year 2000, the share of native Latvian-speakers has grown with 2.6 percentage points and the share of native Russian speakers and speakers of other languages has fallen with 1.5 and 0.9 percentage points respectively. The language spoken at home is not always the same as the person’s native language, marriages across nationalities being one of the explanations for this. 7.5 percent of the Latvian speakers use Russian at home, and 8.5 percent of Russian speakers use Latvian. The share of speakers of each language differs widely between different regions (see Figure 1 below). In , around 90 percent speak Latvian as their native language and/or at home, in Kurzeme the figure is 75-80 percent and in Zemgale 70-75 percent. has around 55 percent Russian-speakers, Pieriga has 22-23 percent and in 55-60 percent speak Russian natively and/or at home. Additionally, the share of Russian speakers is significantly larger among the age group 55+ (43.3 percent) than among people under the age of 35 (31.6 percent).27

Figure 1: Statistical regions of Latvia

In the beginning of 2017, ethnic constituted 62 percent of the population. 25.4 percent were Russians, 3.3 percent Belarusians, 2.2 percent Ukrainians, 2.1 percent . Five percent of the population are , Jews, Roma, Germans, Estonians, Tatars or of another ethnicity.28 There are,

27 Central Statistical Bureau 28 Eurydice (2020-02-13) 12

as we can see, a significantly higher share of native Russian-speakers than there are ethnic Russians. Why it so, is a thesis topic in its own.

According to data from Eurobarometer, 86 percent of the Latvian population speaks Latvian as a native or foreign language. For Russian, the figure is 63,1 percent. This shows that Latvian is the most widely spoken language in Latvia. However, 35,8 percent speaks Russian as a foreign language, while only 14,8 percent of the population speak Latvian as a foreign language. The author uses this data with some caution since it is from 2012 and based on self-assessment surveys. This data also deviates substantially from the data provided by CSB regarding the percentage of native speakers of each language.29

1.6 Language law and policy in Latvia To put the education reform in a larger policy context, a presentation of Latvian legislation regarding language is given.

1.6.1 Official Language Law Both the and the Official Language Law stipulates that Latvian is the only official language in Latvia.30 Usually the term state language (valsts valoda in Latvian) is used, instead of official language. The Official Language Law also recognizes the “Latgalian written language31 as a historic variant of the Latvian language.”32 Furthermore, Section 4 of the law states that “the State shall ensure the maintenance, protection and development of the Liv language33 as the language of the indigenous (autochthon) population.”34 The purposes of the Latvian state language law are, according to itself, to ensure:

”1) the maintenance, protection and development of the Latvian language;

2) the maintenance of the cultural and historic heritage of the Latvian nation;

3) the right to freely use the Latvian language in any sphere of life within the whole territory of Latvia;

4) the integration of members of ethnic minorities into the society of Latvia, while observing their rights to use their native language or other languages;

5) the increased influence of the Latvian language in the cultural environment of Latvia, to promote a more rapid integration of society.”35

1.6.2.The Constitution of Latvia The Latvian constitution states that the proclamation of the Republic of Latvia was founded on the

“the unwavering will of the Latvian nation to have its own State and its inalienable right of self-determination in order to guarantee the existence and development of the Latvian nation, its language and culture

29 Languageknowledge.eu 30 Likumi.lv (2000), likumi.lv (1922) 31 There is some discussion whether Latgalian should be classified as its own language, or if it is a Latvian . 32 Likumi.lv (2000) section 3.4 33 A Finno-Ugric language, related to Finnish and Estonian 34 Likumi.lv (2000) section 4 35 Likumi.lv (2000) section 1 13

throughout the centuries, to ensure freedom and promote welfare of the people of Latvia and each individual.”36 (My emphasis)

The status of Latvian as the sole official language is seen as one of the country’s foundational values: “Loyalty to Latvia, the Latvian language as the only official language, freedom, equality, solidarity, justice, honesty, work ethic and family are the foundations of a cohesive society”. 18 of the constitution requires a person elected to the Saeima to, before taking office, give a “solemn promise” to, inter alia, defend “the Latvian language as the only official language.”37 Article 114 guarantees the right of ethnic minorities to “preserve and develop their language and their ethnic and cultural identity.”38

1.6.3 Education Law and General Education Law The Education Law stipulates that “[i]n state, municipal and state higher education institutions, education is acquired in the state language.”39 This also applies to private educational institutions.40 Regarding minority education, the law states that “minority education programs are developed by an by choosing one of the sample curricula included in the state pre-school education guidelines or the state basic education standard.”41 (For requirements regarding the share of education done in the state language, see 1.8). In this section, the law also prescribes that “minority education programs shall additionally include the content necessary for the acquisition of the relevant ethnic culture and the integration of national minorities in Latvia.”42 Additionally, the General Education Law states that one of the goals of pre-school (mandatory from the age of five) is that the child should have acquired “basic skills in the use of the state language”.43

1.7 Parliamentary and ruling parties There are currently seven parties in the Saeima:

• "Saskaņa" sociāldemokrātiskā partija, • Politiskā partija "KPV LV", • Jaunā konservatīvā partija, • Attīstībai/Par!, • Nacionālā apvienība "Visu Latvijai!"-"Tēvzemei un Brīvībai/LNNK", • Zaļo un Zemnieku savienība • Jaunā Vienotība

All parties except Saskaņa and Zaļo un Zemnieku savienība are a part of the current governing coalition. The parties that consisted the ruling coalition in 2018, when the reform was passed, were (NA), (ZZS) and (V).44

36 Likumi.lv (1922) preamble 37 Likumi.lv (1922) art. 18 38 Likumi.lv (1922) art. 114 39 Izglītības likums, 9. pants. 40 Ibid. 41 Izglītības likums, 41. pants. 42 Ibid. 43 Vispārējās izglītības likums, 20. Pants. 44 The party coalition Jaunā Vienotība was created before the election in 2018. 14

1.8 The reform regarding language of instruction According to the Minister of Education at the time, Karlis Sadurskis, the 2018 language reform is a part of a larger educational reform regarding the curriculum of the Latvian education system.45

The implementation of the 2018 reform is done gradually. Starting the school year 2017/2018, the central examinations in 12th grade can only be taken in Latvian. The following year, “new educational guidelines for will ensure significant increase in the role of the Latvian language in the learning process from the age of five.”46 From pre-school to high school, the studies are still bilingual. Additionally, the content of state examination for students in the 9th grade are to be in Latvian, however, the students can choose whether to respond in Latvian or Russian.47

In the 2019/2020 school year, there are three major changes:

1. The five existing models for minority education will be replaced with three new models, at grades 1-6.48 2. The transition starts to have at least 80 percent of the curriculum for grades 7-9 in Latvian.49 3. All state examinations in the 9th grade has to be taken in Latvian.50

During the schoolyear 2020/2021, “all general subjects in grades 10-11 in general education institutions will be taught in Latvian.” And the following schoolyear, this will apply to students in 12th grade as well. As mentioned earlier, “subjects related to the respective minority’s language, literature, culture and history will continue to be taught in the students’ mother tongue.”51 When the reform is completed, at least 50 percent of the curriculum for grades 1-6 has to be in Latvian. For grades 7-9, the figure is 80 percent, and in high school (grades 10-12) 100 percent of the curriculum will be in Latvian (with the aforementioned exceptions).52 All parties in the Saeima except Harmony voted in favour of the reform.53

1.9 Disposition The next chapter presents some of the research done in this field, chapter 3 presents the theoretical framework and chapter 4 contains a description of the methods and arguments used, as well as a critical discussion about this. In Chapter 5, the arguments of the political actors are presented and analysed, and the normative/constructive argumentation is outlined. In the final chapter, the findings of this thesis are discussed in relation to its aim and the earlier research. Suggestions to further research are also offered.

45 Sadurskis (2020-05-10) 46 Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2018-06-18) 47 Minstry of Education and Science (2018-06-18) Image 48 Ibid. 49 Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2018-06-18) 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Minstry of Education and Science (2018-06-18) Image 53 Saeima (2018-02-12) 15

2. Previous research In this chapter, I present some of the research that has been done previously in this field and discuss how the different studies provide a useful “background” for my thesis. There have been several studies in the area in which this thesis belongs – Latvian language policy and the situation of linguistic minorities. The research presented below concerns minority attitudes towards learning the majority language, the debate surrounding the reform of 2004, Latvian language policies in general, the connection between language and nationalism, and mono- and multilingualism.

2.1 Research about Latvia Romanov differentiates between integrative and instrumental reasons for learning Latvian. Persons with integrative reasons and a positive view of the majority language and -culture display a stronger will of learning the language than those with only instrumental motivation. Romanov also argues that Russian- speakers living in Latvian-dominated areas are more prone to “shift” to Latvian. 54 Cara studied the attitudes and behaviour of young Russian-speakers enrolled in Russian-medium schools in Riga prior to and after the education reform of 2004. She found that pupils and their parents preferred being (or becoming) bilingual rather than either not learning Latvian at all or abandoning their mother tongue altogether.55 Normative propositions are often, partly, relying on statements regarding empirical conditions.56 Therefore, knowledge about these attitudes regarding Latvian- may be a valuable component in crafting a sound, normative proposal.

Ivlevs and King found that the reform of 2004 markedly affected the results of students in minority schools negatively. However, the drop in performance levels were largest the first years after the reform. The researchers concluded there might have been some recovery, but it was too early to determine whether or not it is the case. 57 To study the effects of one language/education reform and to study the debate surrounding another, similar, reform is to approach the same area of research from different angles. Together they can contribute to a more multifaceted description of the study object, which is language policy in the education system.

Hogan-Brun studied the “macro framing”58 in the Latvian-language and Russian-language media outlets regarding the public debate surrounding the reform of 2004. Russian-language media argued that the reform was an expression of “assimilating ‘Latvianization’”59. Latvian-language media, on the other hand, contended that Russian-language media was spreading “untruths and commonplace stereotypes”60; “the position of the Russian language was protected since most of its speakers chose the maintenance of Russian anyway”.61 Hogan-Brun concluded that “more attention may need to be paid in the future to the multilingual nature of the resident population.” She also argues that the increasingly salient role of Latvian in minority schools will, at least for the time being, “compete with

54 Romanov (2000) in Cernakova (2014) p. 15 55 Cara (2010) in Cernakova (2014) pp. 15-16 56 Badersten (2003) 57 Ivlevs & King (2014) 58 See Hogan-Brun (2006) pp. 322-323 for more information about this term. 59 Hogan-Brun (2006) p. 324 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid. 16

the identity values associated with the minority languages, especially Russian.”62 Furthermore, Hogan- Brun also pointed out that language choice is increasingly viewed as a human right. Her most central conclusion, however, is arguably that there is a ”discrepancy in present-day Latvia between language policy (as laid down by law) and actual beliefs, needs and practices amongst majority and minority communities.”63 Like Hogan-Brun’s paper, this thesis describes the debate surrounding a language- related, Latvian education reform. Howbeit, in this thesis the focus is not on the framing of the debate in media, but rather on the arguments of political actors. This constitutes an important complementing aspect (to media) of the public debate. My thesis also offers an understanding of the arguments of the (party-)political part of the public debate in relation to theories regarding nationalism and language policy. Through my thesis I also contribute to bringing “more attention” to the fact that the Latvian society is bi-/multilingual64. Finally, the phenomenon that a more salient position for the Latvian language in minority schools can compete with a Russian-speaking identity, is relevant to keep in mind whilst doing the normative argumentation.

Pavlenko sees a contradiction between a person’s right to speak her native language and what she views as a stance according to which the languages themselves have rights. She argues that Latvia, since the restoration of independence, has protected and promoted the rights of the Latvian language. Thus, Latvia has replaced “official bilingualism” with “official monolingualism”, which she views as problematic. It is humans that should have rights, not languages.65 The stance that the language policy of the Latvian state is unfair can be seen as a contribution to the ongoing public discussion regarding the statuses of different languages in Latvia. Thus, the thesis connects with Pavlenko’s publication concerning the state language policy in relation to the rights of minorities and national identity.

There are also two master’s theses about Latvian language policy. Cernakova examined what factors affect the choice of schools, with regards to the language of instruction, that Russian- and Polish- speaking parents made for their children. She found that preserving the mother tongue was viewed as having an intrinsic value, which “spoke” in favour of choosing a minority school.66 On the other hand, the instrumental goals such as being accepted by the ethnic Latvians also affected the choice, in the direction of choosing an Latvian-medium school. Hjertonsson studied in 2001 to what extent Latvian language policy was in accordance with international law regarding linguistic minority rights. She found significant discrepancy between the two.67 This master’s thesis contributes to the body of research about Latvian language policy from a new angle, namely, analysing arguments regarding a language reform in relation to theories on the connection between nationalism/nationhood and language, and theory on linguistic minority rights.

62 Hogan-Brun p. 330 63 Ibid. 64 Two major languages, but several minority languages. 65 Pavlenko (2011) 66 Cernakova (2014) 67 Hjertonsson (2001) 17

2.2 Language and nationalism Spires writes about Lithuanian linguistic nationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Nationalist movements using language as a rallying point is not uncommon, but in the Lithuanian case the language was central to the nationalist cause. A foundation of this linguistic nationalism was the claims to antiquity, often made by scientists. In a document from 1921 issued by the Lithuanian Information Bureau an anonymous author stated that “something significant clings to a people who, amidst the ocean of Slavs and Teutons, have preserved up to the present day their ethnical unity, unique language, and peculiar ancient civilisation.”68 The language, perceived by many to be under an existential threat, was unique because of its “antiquity and archaism, factors which were held to ‘ennoble’ the people who spoke it, and which made the preservation of the language a national imperative.”69In reality, however, there were no books in Lithuanian up until the 16th century, the language had never been a state language, and at times even people who considered themselves to be Lithuanian disregarded the language.70 Nonetheless, the language and it’s antiquity was central to the nationalist discourse, which implied that “one could not be a true Lithuanian until one ‘recovered’ the ancestral language”.71

Skerrett studied the attitudes of Russian- and Finnish-speakers living in about normalization or Estonianization. In Catalonia, normalization is the official term for the policy that is about “increasing the number of public and private domains, [where] the Catalan language should become the unmarked (i.e. normal) choice for all citizens of Catalonia, wherever their origins.”72 In Estonia there has been, since the regaining of independence in 1991, efforts to “reverse the decline in the public use of Estonian that had occurred during the Soviet occupation.”73 He concluded that the Russian- and Finnish-speaking interviewees agreed that “because of the period of Soviet occupation of Estonia, the national language needs to be maintained and developed in an official capacity.”74 Skerrett and the interviewees also discussed the protection of languages, where the status of was compared to the status of Swedish in :

“It could be argued that Swedish needs protection as a minority language, where Estonian as a majority language does not. However, taking into account Russian’s inherited lingua franca status places Estonian’s majority status in question, as, overall, the number of people who can speak Russian in Estonia is still larger than the number of people who can speak Estonian.”75

Skerrett argues that making Russian an official language might not promote normalization in the short term, but maybe in the long term. This is because it could promote “integration into the Estonian state by increasing the feeling of belonging to the country”76 This study is relevant because Latvia’s sociolinguistic situation is similar to that of Estonia – both countries were annexed and occupied by the Soviet Union and were subject to the dominance of the Russian language. Whether Estonian needs

68 Lithuanian Information Bureau (1921) p. 1 in Spires (1999) p. 485 69 Spires p. 486 70 Ibid. 486, 488 71 Ibid. p. 498 72 Skerrett (2012) p. 364, quoting (Laitin 1992, p. 150; Skerrett 2007) 73 Skerrett p. 364 74 Ibid. p. 381 75 Ibid. p. 382 76 Ibid. p. 383 18

protection because of “Russian’s inherited lingua franca status”, and the potential effects of giving Russian official status is therefore something that can be applied to the Latvian context as well.

2.3 Monolingualism and multilingualism Tove Skutnabb-Kangas states that the choice of language of instruction is affected by both so-called external and internal pressure. Internal pressure is generated domestically, and the external kind comes from foreign countries and actors. The pressure can be of many kinds: social, political, economic, technical and ideological. Previously, the choice of language of instruction may have been connected to internal pressures, and the choice of which foreign languages that are taught in schools is affected by external factors. However, Skutnabb-Kangas argues that the distinction between internal and external pressure is nowadays hard to make.77

Skutnabb-Kangas sees the approaches to linguistic policy on a spectrum where the two ends are called multilingual diversity and monolingual reductionism78. According to Skutnabb-Kangas the “ideology of monolingual reductionism seems to me to be connected with the idea of an imagined community (Anderson 1983): the mythical, homogenous nation-state (a state with one nation and one language) which does not exist anywhere in the world.”79 This nation should be united by one language. Therefore, other (minority) nations within the nation-state is an anomaly and, potentially, a threat to its unity and survival. To reduce the level of threat the majority tries to convince the minority that it is “small and backward”80 and that it has “’everything to gain from merging into greater nations’(…) and that their languages are ‘doomed to disappear’”81.

Her assessment of the approaches is highly normative: Monolingualism is, globally speaking, considered an anomaly – most people and states are, although sometimes not officially, bi- or multilingual. Furthermore, she critiques the “myths” that monolingualism is both desirable and unavoidable.82

In the book “Who is afraid of multilingual education?”, the Iranian language policy in the education system is discussed. Laila Aghai, who reviewed the book, argued that:

“Skutnabb-Kangas explains that the unity argument is commonly used among policymakers who oppose multilingual education. Rejection of multilingualism stems from the beliefs that a) children will not learn the official language if they are taught in their mother tongue, b) Farsi will become an endangered language if schools stop teaching it, and ) teaching minority languages will result in separation, cultural isolation, and lack of assimilation. Thus, the one-nation-one-language ideology is introduced by politicians and practiced nationwide.”83

In conclusion, Skutnabb-Kangas discusses the monolingualist perception that linguistic uniformity is a prerequisite for national unity. Whether this notion is true or not will (likely) be an essential component of the political debate in Latvia.

77 Skutnabb-Kangas (1996) p. 175 78 She also uses the term “monolingual stupidity/naivety” 79 Ibid. p. 177 80 Ibid. p. 178 81 Ibid. p. 178 82 Ibid. pp. 181-185 83 Aghai (2019) p. 204 19

3.Theory The author’s view on the role of theory in this thesis is that it is necessary to use several kinds of theories and concepts – and several aspects of earlier research – related to language and nationalism. The ambition is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the debate, not to test a particular theory’s ability to explain a certain phenomenon. According to Esaiasson et. al., this is a characteristic of a “theory consuming” approach.84 With that said, the explanatory power of the theories is of course of relevance. This will be discussed in the final chapter of the thesis.

The theoretical framework of the thesis is mainly based on concepts that can be find in the two books Language and Minority Rights by May and Imagined communities by Benedict Andersson. I have chosen Stephen May’s book since it focuses explicitly on what linguistic rights minorities should have, and the connection between language identity and nationhood. (It also offers a good overview on different, both historical and theoretical, approaches to nationalism, language and minority rights.) Anderson’s book has been highly influential in the field and contains a compelling account of the character of national belonging – a strong and meaningful but imagined community.

The theories and research presented in this chapter are used both in the descriptive and normative part. Some parts are used for both purposes, some only for one of them.

3.1 Imagined communities My theoretical framework has as its point of departure Anderson’s thoughts, that a nation is an imagined community. A family, a sports association or a small village might be small enough for people to feel a sense of community and belonging based on interpersonal relationships. But in order to create a sense of community between millions of people that do not know each other at all, it must be imagined, rather than relation based.85 That the nations are imagined communities does not mean that they are imaginary. According to May, Anderson’s stance is reminiscent of the early modernists, which “highlighted the fictional elements of nation formation. However, they also assumed that nations, once formed, were real communities of culture and power.”86

According to Anderson, one of the most important causes for nationalism was the birth of so-called print capitalism. This technology made it possible to produce books in large quantities, and the capitalists were always looking for new markets. Therefore, when the market was saturated book printers aimed for the market of vernacular-speaking monoglots.87 It should also be said that the Protestant Reformation and print-capitalism had a somewhat “symbiotic” relationship, that reinforced each other.88

Before book printing, the spoken vernaculars were highly unstandardized, and speakers of different variants/ often had considerable difficulties to communicate. As Anderson puts it: “Nothing served to ‘assemble’ related vernaculars more than capitalism, which, within the limits of grammars and syntaxes, created mechanically reproduced print-languages capable of dissemination through the

84 Esaiasson et. al. (2017) pp. 42-43 85 Andersson (2016) p. 6 86 May (2001) p. 68 87 Anderson pp. 37-38 88 Ibid. pp. 39-40 20

markets.”89 A factor that “aided” print-capitalism in strengthening the sense of national consciousness was the emerging use of vernaculars as administrative languages. However, Anderson emphasizes that these were state languages not national ones, and the “choice” (Anderson’s ) of the state languages was slow, gradual and pragmatic rather than deliberate action inspired by nationalist thought. As an example, the court of the Russian dynasty Romanov used German and French. Anderson also clarifies that these languages concerned the state administration, there was little will to impose them on the general public.90

Print-languages contributed to the sense of national consciousness in several ways. “It created unified fields of exchange and communication below Latin and above the spoken vernaculars.”91 This meant that speakers of widely different varieties of a language, that would not understand each other in speech, could do so through writing. Anderson states that:

“In the process, they gradually became aware of the hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people in their particular language field, and at the same time that only those hundreds of thousands, or millions, so belonged. These fellow-readers, to whom they were connected through print, formed (…) the embryo of the nationally imagined community”92

Print-language also “stabilized” languages which “in the long run helped to build that image of antiquity so central to the subjective idea of the nation.”93 A third impact that print-languages had was that they gave rise to what Anderson calls languages-of-power. Standardization of writing was based on some dialect(s) rather than others. The variants who were not so similar to the official one consequently ended up in a situation with less power than the dominant dialect.94 This aspect will be further discussed in section 3.3.

According to May’s reading of Imagined Communities, the increasing centralization of the state also contributed to the awakening of national identity. Through the state (education system) “a shared sense of a particular nation’s history – along with its language(s) and cultural symbols – began to be cultivated.”95

Anderson expresses in a poetic way the relation between language and nationalism:

“What the eye is to the lover – that particular, ordinary eye he or she is born with – language – whatever language history has made his or her mother tongue – is to the patriot. Through language, encountered at mother’s knee and parted only at the grave, pasts are restored, fellowships are imagined, and futures dreamed.”96

89 Andersson p. 44 90 Andersson pp. 40-42 91 Ibid. 92 Ibid. 93 Ibid. 94 Ibid. p. 45 95 May (2001) p. 67. For concrete examples, see for instance Anderson p. 201 96 Andersson p. 154 21

3.1.1 Applying “imagined community” as an analytical tool In Anderson’s book, the term imagined communities refers to how the sense of nationhood arose in the modern age. In this thesis the imagined community concept will be used as a lens to analyse the empiric material, along with other concepts (see the bullet list in section 4.1). An imagined community, in this thesis, refers to a group – inhabitants of a nation-state – that feel a sense of belonging to the same political nation, but also to a common cultural97 community; that they are one people, one tauta98!

An interesting quality with the concept of imagined communities is that it appears to be compatible with both a monolingual (and monocultural) approach, as well as a multilingual (and multicultural) one. A good example of proponents of a monolingual nation-state are the Jacobins of the French Revolution, who argued that “the unity of the Republic demands the unity of speech”99 and that “…hatred of the Republic speaks German, counter-revolution speaks Italian and fanatism speaks Basque”100. Furthermore, “the ongoing maintenance of other languages was specifically opposed to the aims of the Revolution”101 Thus, the speakers of other languages and dialects than (the Parisian) French was not only linguistically different, they were political enemies of the post-revolutionary state. The multilingually oriented would instead argue that ethnic, political conflicts involving language are more likely to occur if the state supresses or ignores the linguistic demands and rights of minorities, than if it recognises these rights. May gives the bilingual states Belgium and as examples of this principle.102

In line with the previous paragraph, the two main categories will be creation or maintenance of an imagined community through monolingualism (and monoculturalism), or through multilingualism (and multiculturalism). Though, as we will see in section 3.2, language has a connection with ethnicity and often is seen as a vital part of an ethnicity’s culture, in this thesis the focus will be on language: imagined communities based on multi- or monolingualism.

3.1.2 Defining monolingualism and multilingualism For a (pro-Latvian) “monolingualist”, Latvian should be the unifying language of Latvia. A society that is officially multilingual, or “multilingual in the public sphere”, is hence undesirable. Consequently, the language of instruction in schools should be monolingual. Withal, monolingualism does not necessarily entail hostility to other ethnic groups or wanting to purge the country of other languages. A multilingualist approach, in this thesis, is characterized by seeing a bi-/multilingual Latvia as desirable. To push for monolingualism just stirs up hate among native speakers of a minority, or non-dominant, language. On a concrete level, “multilingualists” are in favour of several languages of instruction in schools.

The question (in the Latvian case) is not so much whether Russian and other languages should be allowed in the private sphere or not, but rather how many languages should be part of the official sphere. Furthermore, and more importantly, should there be only one language that works as a unifier of the Latvian people, a common language embraced by all its residents?

97 Using a broad definition of culture 98 Latvian: ”nation” 99 May p. 159 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid. 102 May p. 152 22

3.2 The role of language May discusses the connections between language, minorities, identity and nationalism. He uses the words of Ernest Renan and states that “language may invite us to unite but it does not compel us to do so.”103 Thus, May’s position is that language may be the most prominent marker of ethnic identity in some cases, but not necessarily all. Furthermore, he states that “there is no inevitable correspondence between language and ethnicity.”104 However, May clarifies that just because language is not (always) the determining identity marker does not mean it is not an significant one. He points out that “language may not be intrinsically valuable in itself – it is not primordial – but it does have strong and felt associations with ethnic and national identity.”105

The cultural significance of language helps to explain why language is not rarely used as a rallying point for ethnonationalist causes. May continues: “In this regard, the interconnections between the cultural and political dimensions of language become central, most obviously in the official status accorded to particular languages within the nation-state.”106

The “German Romantics” – Herder, Humboldt and Fichte – argued, contrary to May’s and Renan’s more constructivist approach, that the language was the most essential part of the character of a nation. It was the soul or spirit of the nation.107 Humboldt states that: “For every language we can infer backwards to the national character”.108 In Kedourie’s work Nationalism he holds that the approach of the German Romantics saw languages as “an outward sign of a group’s particular identity and a significant means of ensuring its continuation.”109 Furthermore, Herder argued that notion of a volk110 without a language was absurd and self-contradictory.111

3.3 Language and power A state/national language often is created by “choosing” one dialect out of many within a wide range of varieties of a language. May states that:

“’national’ languages are so called because they have been legitimated by the state and institutionalised within civil society, usually to the exclusion of other languages. Legitimation involves the formal recognition by the state of a particular language variety and this recognition is realised, usually, by the constitutional and /or legislative benediction of official status”112

Through the process explained above, the language gets “taken for granted”. Speakers of the national language hence receive a more advantageous position in society. They usually control the “areas of administration, politics, education and the economy”113. The other languages are often limited to the

103 May p. 129 104 Ibid. 105 Ibid. 106 Ibid. pp. 129-130 107 Cowan (1963) p.277 in May p. 57 108 Humboldt (1988) p. 154 in May p. 57 109 Kedourie (1960) p. 71 in May p.58 110 The German word for “people” 111 Barnard (1965) p. 57 in May (2001) p. 58 112 May p.150 113 May p. 152 23

private domain. A minority language-speaker thus has to abandon their mother tongue if they want to get “greater access to the public realm.”114

May argues that the nation-state creates sociological minorities “by establishing a civic language and culture that is largely limited to, and representative of, the dominant ethnie.”115 As a consequence, minorities will not have linguistic and cultural rights if they are deemed different and deviating from that of the dominant ethnic group. In contrast, May claims that:

“there is a strong argument for schools extending and reconstituting what as ‘accepted’ and ‘acceptable’ cultural and linguistic knowledge. Moreover, the charge that such recognition would inevitably lead to a rampant cultural and linguistic relativism does not necessarily follow .(…) In short, greater ethnolinguistic democracy does not necessarily imply ethnolinguistic equality – reasonable limits can still be drawn.”116

The nation-state reproduces the cultural and linguistic hegemony of the dominant ethnicity in a subtle way that portrays the national language and culture as something neutral, even though it is not.117 Fernand de Varennes argues that ”by imposing a language requirement, the state shows a definite preference towards some individuals on the basis of language… In other words, the imposition of a single language for use in state activities and services is by no means a neutral act.”118

About the decline of a language May writes that it “always occur in bilingual multilingual contexts, in which a ‘majority’ language – that is , a language with greater political power, privilege and social prestige comes to replace the range and functions of a minority language.“119 Speakers of a minority language will inevitably over time come to speak the majority language.120 Although Latvian is the majority language in Latvia, it is a small language in relation to the neighbouring Russian language. Also, as implied by the authors below, Russian has a legacy of being the dominant language in what once was the Soviet Union.

Pavlenko writes that in the Soviet era, Russian functioned, though not officially, as a state language. Therefore:

“Russian speakers in titular could afford to be monolingual or at least to behave as if they were, even if they studied titular languages in secondary school. Titular-language speakers were able to maintain their own languages with the support of the educational system and other titular-medium institutions but had to use L2 Russian if they desired specialized higher education and occupational mobility.”121

Marten writes that “as a consequence of the dominant role of Russian in Soviet Latvia, language legislation since the 1990s has aimed to reverse the language shift by reversing language prestige and functions.”122 According to Paulston and Heidemann, “the driving factor behind the [Latvian] language legislation is fear of impending language shift to Russian and the loss of Latvian forever.” The authors

114 Nelde (1997) in May p. 152 115 May p. 92 116 Ibid. p. 168 117 Ibid. p. 92 118 de Varennes (1996a) p. 86-87, in May p. 152 119 May p. 1 120 Ibid. 121 Pavlenko (2011) p. 39 122 Marten (2010) p. 115 24

imply this is due to the fact that the sizable Russian-speaking population in Latvia is mainly monoglot123, while most Latvians are bilingual in Latvian and Russian.124

3.4 Nationalism and education Elie Kedourie contends that “On nationalist theory… the purpose of education is not to transmit knowledge, traditional wisdom, and the ways devised by a society for attending to the common concerns; its purpose rather is wholly political, to bend the will of the young to the will of the nation.”125

In nationalist political endeavours, the school system has been seen as a tool to create and reproduce a unified and unifying language and culture. According to Gellner, the “nationalist principle of ‘one state, one culture’ saw the state, via its education system, increasingly identified with a specific language and culture – invariably, that of the majority ethnic group, or dominant ethnie.”126 (Emphasis in original)

May brings to attention the perceived trade-off that minorities face between preserving their linguistic and cultural identity and gaining educational and career-related opportunities. According to Secada and Lightfoot, this trade-off is increasingly viewed by minorities as a bad bargain: “give up your language and you might have opportunity”127 (emphasis in original). Kenneth Howe claims that equal educational opportunities for minorities are only valuable if they can acquire them without having to give up their identity.128

3.5 Language rights – tolerance or promotion? Sociolinguist Heinz Kloss talks about linguistic rights in terms of tolerance-oriented rights and promotion-oriented rights. The first kind of rights are about the right to “preserve one’s language in the private, non-governmental sphere of national life.”129 These rights can be defined both narrowly and broadly. May continues:

“They include the right of individuals to use their first language at home and in public, freedom of assembly and organization, the right to establish private cultural, economic and social institutions wherein the first language may be used, and the right to foster one’s first language in private schools. The key principle of such rights is that the state does ‘not interfere with efforts on the parts of the minority to make use of [their language] in the private domain.’130” 131

Promotion-oriented rights give rights related to the public or civic realm of the nation-state. This involves “public authorities [in] trying to promote a minority [language] by having it used in public institutions – legislative, administrative and educational, including the public schools.”132 (May’s brackets.) The application of these rights can vary from just providing official documents in said

123 The notion of a monoglot Russian population may be up for debate. See Eurobarometer in section 1.5 for comparison. 124 Paulston & Heidemann (2006) p. 299 125 Kedourie (1960) pp. 83-84, in May p. 172 126 May p. 168 127 Ibid. p.169 128 Howe (1992) p. 469 (in May p. 196) 129 May p. 185 130 Kloss (1977) p.2 (in May p. 185) 131 May p. 185 132 Kloss p. 2 (in May p. 185) 25

language(s) to using the language in “all formal domains within the nation-state, thus allowing the minority language group ‘to care for its internal affairs through its own public organs, which amounts to the [state] allowing self-government for the minority group.’133”134 In a promotion-oriented approach, state-funded education in the minority language is seen as a right.135 (My emphasis)

3.6 Six stages of linguistic minority rights Stacy Churchill has created a model that displays different language policies and their effects. The policies are divided into six different stages. I will present each of the stages below. At Stage 1, the use of minority languages is seen as a threat to unity of the state. Symptomatic for this approach was an order from the Spanish government from the 18th of May 1938, which stated: “the Spain of Franco cannot tolerate aggressions towards the unity of its language”136 At this stage, minority language speakers face difficulties in the education system, and it is not uncommon that minority languages are proscribed from schools. In the case of Tibet, the Chinese authorities forbid the use of the Tibetan language in schools. The children were to be taught in Mandarin instead. According to May, the official reason was “’improving’ the educational attainment of Tibetan children.”137 The “real” reason was, however, that wanted to combat Tibetan linguistic identity and, in turn, curb Tibetan nationalist tendencies.138

Policies at Stage 2 are also assimilatory, but in a “nicer” way than on the previous stage. Here the state views the students with minority background as unfortunate, in need of compensatory education in the national/majority language.139 Stage 3 policies recognises, and has a positive view on, minority cultures and strives to combat cultural discrimination and prejudice. States that apply multicultural policies are often found on this stage.140 However, critics argue that this approach focuses on cultural recognition at the expense of recognizing, and challenging, the structural discrimination, regarding (among other things) race, culture and language, that minorities can face. At Stage 4, the policies acknowledge the important link between language, identity and learning. Bilingual programmes are common at this stage. Nonetheless, the goal of bilingual education is to facilitate the linguistic transition of minority students from their mother tongue to the majority/national/state language. May states that according to Churchill “Stages 1-4 all posit that minority groups should seek the same social, cultural and linguistic outcomes”141 as the dominant ethnic group. The underlying premise of this is “the incorporation of minority groups into the hegemonic civic culture of the nation-state with minimal accommodation to minority languages and cultures.”142

At Stage 5, unlike all previous stages, minority languages are not viewed as a threat or something that the majority should “help” the minority to transition away from. At this stage, it appears that

133 Kloss p. 2 (in May p. 185) 134 May p. 185 135 Ibid. 136 De Varennes (1996) p. 22 (in May (2001) p. 171) 137 May p. 171 138 Ibid. 139 Ibid. p.172-173 140 Ibid. p. 173-176 141 May p. 177 142 Ibid. 26

policymakers recognise the value linguistic minorities place on their mother tongue. are taken to preserve the minority language. Maintaining a minority language is viewed as having linguistic and cultural benefits, both for the minority itself and the wider society. The educational approach at this stage is called “maintenance bilingualism” and is often characterized by immersion programmes that “protect” minority students from the otherwise omnipresent majority language. However, at Stage 5 the protection of the linguistic rights of the minorities is focused on the private use of their language. At the public, or state, level the “linguistic uniformity”143 remains unchallenged.144

At Stage 6 there is formal multilingualism. Here, the dominant ethnie has to “accommodate minority groups and their language(s) in all shared domains (at least in theory).”145 This is sometimes called mutual accommodation. The formal multilingualism is often guaranteed in one of two “organizing principles”. The first is called the “territorial organizing principle”, which means that the minority language is protected by giving it (co-)official status in regions where the minority group is sizeable or even in numerical majority. An example of this is Québec in Canada. The other principle is called the “personality language principle”. This means that individuals have linguistic rights “irrespective of their geographical position”146 is a good example of this approach.147

143 May. p. 178 144 Ibid. pp. 177-178 145 Ibid. p. 178 146 Ibid. p. 179 147 Ibid. pp. 178-180 27

4. Methodological outlines and material The methods used in the descriptive and the normative part of the thesis are different, they are presented below in separate sections. First, the method for analysing the arguments of the political actors, descriptive idea analysis, is outlined. Then, the empirical material is presented. The outline of the normative method follows afterwards. The penultimate section outlines the structure of the analysis. The chapter ends with a critical discussion regarding the method and material.

4.1 Descriptive idea analysis In the descriptive part of the study (Part 1 and 2, see below), a descriptive idea analysis148 is used. Evert Vedung describes four different types of idea analysis: descriptive, critiquing, explanatory and constructive.149 Vedung and Beckman, separately, argue that the descriptive analysis is a necessary foundation for the other types of analysis, but it is also fully sufficient on its own.150 According to Vedung and Beckman, the descriptive idea analysis is not about just reproducing the material at hand. Instead, it requires the researcher to apply a theoretical framework, or an analytical model, to the object he or she is analysing. The analytical model, (together with the research questions) is used to create boundaries for what should be analysed, leaving out the irrelevant parts of the material, and also to structure the material that is relevant.151 Vedung writes that the idea analyst has to merge the “dispersed, fragmentary” components of the empiric material and create a “comprehensive whole”.152 The analytical model should also connect to scientific theory, and the researcher should show how the specific case is an instance of a wider field of cases.153

Vedung states that one can have two different approaches to using the empirical “raw material”. Applying the inductive approach, the researcher uses it to create the research questions and the analytical model. With the deductive method, the (already) created research questions and analytical model is used to structure the “unrefined” material. Vedung argues that it is common to go back and forth between the approaches as the work progresses.154 In this thesis, the author beforehand decided to apply theories (and models) regarding language and nationalism to the empirical material. The author’s assumption was that there is a division among the parties regarding those who want Latvian to be the only dominant language in Latvia, and those who envision a more multilingual society. Therefore, the analytical model should consist of some kind of monolingualism-multilingualism dichotomy. On a lower level of abstraction, the analytical model should also contain models or concepts regarding linguistic rights.

My “largest” theoretical concept, which is at a higher level of abstraction than the others, is the concept of an imagined community (see also section 3.1.1). This is used to describe how the political actors think a sense of belonging and cohesion is created – by a monolingual or multilingual approach. The other

148 The Swedish term is ”idéanalys”. Because a corresponding, established term in English is lacking, the term is directly translated. 149 Vedung (2018) 150 Ibid. p. 207, Beckman (2005) pp. 49-52 151 Ibid. p. 210 152 Ibid. p. 211 153 Ibid. p. 211 154 Ibid. p. 205 28

concepts are narrower and more specific in their scope, and used as complements to “imagined community”.

Analytical frameworks or concepts:

• Imagined community – monolingual or multilingual (3.1) • “The unity of the state requires the unity of speech” and “hatred of Republic speaks German” - strict monolingualism (3.1) • The significance of language (May, Renan and the German Romantics) (3.2) • The dominant ethnie’s language as the hegemonic, “neutral” linguistic base for the nation (3.3) • The purpose of nationalist education: “To bend the will of the young to the will of the nation” (3.4) • Opportunity vs. identity (3.4) • Tolerance-oriented and promotion-oriented rights (3.5) • Six stages of minority rights in education (3.6)

The concepts above were successively chosen from the content in the theory chapter, as it became clear what parts of the theoretical literature was adequate for analysing the arguments of the political actors. The section from which each concept is taken, is found in the parenthesis. In a few cases, the arguments of the political actors are also connected to earlier research, since it could analyse said arguments in a way the theoretical framework could not.

For the descriptive analysis, I have chosen to examine the arguments of Jauna Konservativa Partija, Nacionala Apvieniba, Vienotiba, Saskana and Latvijas Krievu Savieniba. The first three are proponents of the reform, the last two opponents. The reason Zalo un Zemnieku Savieniba and Latvijas Regionu Apvieniba were not included is due to the fact that there was very little information to be found about the parties’ standpoints online and that they did not respond to the author’s interview request. Attistibai/Par replied via e-mail that they did not have a position on the 2018 reform, since they were not represented in the Saeima when the reform bill passed. How empiric material was gathered from each of the parties included in the thesis is described and discussed in the sections 4.2, 4.3 and 4.6.

4.2 Qualitative interviews One of the main sources of empirical data are three qualitative interviews. One of the respondents was Miroslav Mitrofanov, co-chairman of the party Latvijas Krievu Savieniba, and ex-Member of the . On the proponent side, the respondents are Anita Muizniece, MP for Jauna Konservativa Partija and Karlis Sadurskis, former Minister of Education from Vienotiba. Due to practical reasons, two of the respondents answered the interview questions in the form of a written questionnaire. The implications of this is discussed in section 4.6.

Interview types can be divided along two lines: The first is open-ended or closed-ended questions. The second is how structured, or standardized, the interview is. Open-ended questions are formulated in such a way that gives the interviewee freedom to answer the question in “their own way”. A closed- ended question has a limited set of possible answers, determined by the researcher.155 In structured

155 Bryman (2011) pp. 243-247 29

interviews, the same set of questions are asked to all interviewees, and in the same order.156 Unstructured interviews are like a conversation, where the researcher just sets the general topic. The specific questions, and the order in which they are asked, can vary a lot between different interviews. Semi-structured interviews depart from a “list of relatively specific themes”157 that are to be discussed. The questions will be asked, with room for some exceptions, in the way and order they are formulated in the interview guide. Furthermore, the follow-up questions are dependent on how the respondent answers the questions, they are not predetermined.158 Usually, structured interviews deploy close- ended questions, the unstructured and semi-structured ones use open-ended questions.159

The interview questions in this thesis are (for the most part160) open-ended. The “structure level” of the interviews contain elements from more than one type: the author made a list of questions that should be answered (semi-structured/structured), but these questions were not exactly the same for everyone (semi-structured/unstructured).

Bryman states that it is common to use purposive sampling in qualitative research. In this sampling method, the units of analysis are chosen because they are, according to some criteria, relevant to the research questions. It is common that the sampling is made on more than one ”level”. 161 The author has made choices on three levels: 1. What kind of units? (Political parties) 2. What parties? 3. Who in respective party? The second and third questions are discussed below.

To get representative and comprehensive views from both sides of the argument, leading politicians from each side have been interviewed/answered surveys. Interview requests were sent to all parties represented in the Saeima, including Latvijas Regionu Apvieniba, which was represented in the Saeima when the reform was initiated. An interview request was also sent to the Latvijas Krievu Savieniba who, although they have not been represented in the Saeima since 2010162, have been the most vocal opponents to this reform. For instance, the party has organized several protests.163

When sending interview (or questionnaire) requests to the parties, I described the purpose of the (descriptive part164 of the) thesis and why I wanted to interview a representative of theirs. In response to this, the parties themselves chose or suggested a representative. For (NA) and (S), I chose articles where leading politicians argue on behalf of the party.

As stated, the descriptive part of the thesis focuses on the 2018 reform, but in order to see the reform in relation to theory and to language policy in general, it is necessary to also examine other phenomena/aspects than the reform itself: How do the political actors view the role of the Latvian and Russian languages in Latvian society? How does the reform affect the sense of national unity? And, if the policies of the 2018 reform are not the “way to go”, what is?

156 Bryman p. 203 157 Ibid.p. 415 158 Ibid. p. 415 159 Ibid. p. 203 160 See for example question 8 in the interview with Mitrofanov, which is more of a closed-ended question. However, since the respondent can motivate/elaborate the answer, it is not entirely closed-ended. 161 Bryman p. 350 162 Centrālā vēlēšanu komisija 163 See for instance, Tass.com (2018-09-15) 164 At that time, it was a bit unclear at first whether or not the thesis would include a normative/constructive argumentation as well 30

Something to take into consideration is how “close” the interview questions should be to the theory? A question close to the theory makes it easier to analyse, for example: “How does your party view the role of language with regards to national identity?”. If it is too closely related to a particular theory or author, on the other hand, there is a risk that the interviewees do not know the theory or author. They are, after all, elected representatives – not academic scholars.

The questions in the interviews are not identical. Firstly, because the respondents are not in the same position – government coalition parties versus an opposition party outside of parliament. Secondly, the interviews were conducted some weeks apart, and in the meantime the author came up with some new, relevant questions. In some ways, the questions and answers of the opponent of the reform covered more issues. For example, the author asked Mitrofanov about their visions for the ideal education model, regarding language of instruction. Since his is party in staunch opposition to the reform, it is interesting to know what kind of system they would want instead. On the other hand, asking a representative of a party that supports the reform what kind of solution they would want instead seems inappropriate. With that being said, it is of course possible that any of the proponents have an ideal policy which is not identical with the content of the reform.

The transcription of Mitrofanov’s interview contains both informal (for example, “it’s”) and formal (“it is”) writing style, since that is how Mitrofanov spoke. Further, a hyphen marks that the speaker interrupts himself, or is interrupted by the other person.

4.3 Articles Due to a lack of parties wanting to participate in interviews, there was a need to complement with news articles in order to have a sufficient amount of empirical material. The purpose with using both the interviews and the articles is to gather information about how the parties view the reform, its consequences for the national unity and the role of languages.

The news articles are from the period 2017-2020, with an emphasis on 2018. This is because the reform was initiated in 2017 and passed in 2018. Articles from 2019-2020 have also been used, when they contain arguments or statements that are applicable on the 2018 reform (see also section 1.3).

To find articles regarding the subject, search phrases165 such as “minority education reform”, “education reform” and “education language” have been used. To find articles about a particular party, the party’s name was added to the search phrase. The articles are primarily from major news outlets in Latvia, but in a few cases they are from Ukranian, American and Chinese outlets (see a list containing all articles and interviews in Appendix 2). Articles in Latvian and Russian have been translated using translation tools online (see section 4.6 for a critical discussion on this).

165 The search phrases have been translated from Latvian. 31

4.4 Normative and constructive method As mentioned in the first chapter, this is a sensitive issue in Latvia. The discussion tends to be polarized and therefore the normative analysis strives to provide an approach that can lead to an imagined community that every resident of Latvia feel they belong to. This section will be longer than the sections concerning the descriptive analysis, but since this is the major contribution of the thesis, the author deems it to be reasonable.

4.4.1 Values and points of departure Normative assessments are based on values. Björn Badersten states that “a value expresses something that is desirable or detestable and provides a foundation for justifying or condemning”166 an action or phenomenon.

My foundational values for the normative analysis are listed below:

• An inclusive imagined community • The preservation of small languages • Linguistic minorities should have the right to use and preserve their native language, since it is a part of their identity. This includes rights related to education.

The first value is a so-called intrinsic167 value identical with the overall aim of the argumentation. The second and the third values are both intrinsic and extrinsic168 (or instrumental) values. They are both ends in themselves, but they are also extrinsic since they are components in the kind of imagined community that I advocate for. There are also two additional important aspects of the argumentation: The approach should be compromise-oriented between “pro-Latvian” and “pro-minority” forces and, it should connect to the previous research (see 2.1) and my theoretical framework.

4.4.2 Ensuring validity When making normative statements, it is important to apply a scientific approach if the statements are to be more than mere personal opinions. According to Badersten, a scientific normative analysis must be intersubjective and possible to critique, and it should have internal and external validity. I will discuss the most important criteria in relation to the thesis. Let us start with discussing the criteria for internal validity.

First, the argumentation should be precise, that means it is based on clear and unambiguous concepts and free from contradictions. Therefore, I will define my foundational values. 169 An inclusive imagined community is defined as a condition where (all or most of) the inhabitants of a state feel a sense of belonging to the same (imagined) community, regardless of ethnicity, or, in this thesis, language. Preserving small languages in this case, means not so much that there is at least one person alive who knows how to speak it, but rather that the language is spoken among its native speakers both in private and public spheres of life.170 That minorities should have linguistic (educational) rights means that they

166 Badersten (2006) p. 22 167 Something that is an end in itself. See Badersten p. 25 168 See Badersten p. 26 169 Ibid. pp. 190, 193 170 See for example May pp. 1-2 32

have the right to develop proficiency in their native language, and the schools should contribute to this by providing language classes. The second and third value are quite similar but refer to different things. Preserving small languages refers to the situation of Latvian, being a small language. Linguistic minority rights refer to rights of the Russian-speaking population in Latvia to use and preserve the language.

Second, an internally valid normative assessment is argumentative. The normative positions should be backed by “thoughtful reasons”171 and the conclusions should follow by the premises. In “Part 3”, I present my arguments and motivate my conclusions.

Third, the analysis is reproduceable, meaning that “it rests upon the openly declared principles which makes it possible to recreate for an outside reviewer.”172 Furthermore, all steps of the argumentation should be possible for the reader to follow.173 Fourth, it is internally relevant and factual174: Only arguments relevant for the normative case in question are included in the reasoning/argumentation. I strive to live up to these criteria by presenting and justifying the foundational values and by being transparent about how I reach certain conclusions.

Badersten also argues that the way the argumentation is conducted, the normative logic, also relates to internal validity. For example, according to the deontological logic, a phenomenon should be evaluated based on whether it is good or bad in itself, whereas a consequentialist perspective bases its judgement on the consequences of this phenomenon.175 My argumentation contains elements of both deontology and consequentialism. I argue in favour of increasing the national unity because I think it has desirable results: it creates a sense of belonging, which arguably would increase individual well-being and decreases the risks of (intranational) conflict between groups. I argue in favour of an inclusive imagined community because I think it is right to include people of all ethnicities in a sense of belonging. I am for protecting languages and linguistic rights because we have a duty towards our fellow human beings to do so. Your native language is arguably a part of your identity, and humans have a right to preserve their identity.

External validity is composed of three different aspects. First, the external validity of normative statements: How do you justify and derive the values that are the “point of departure” or foundation of the analysis? Badersten presents several different ways of justification, some of them are used for the purposes of this thesis.176 The first value is justified by referring to intuitivism177: an imagined national community where all residents, regardless of mother tongue, feel a sense of belonging is an intuitively good thing. Both the second and the third value can be indirectly justified by referring to naturalism178. According to this perspective, what is good and what exists, or is a part of nature, is identical. Languages are something that exist, and is spoken by people, therefore they are good. This in turn means that both languages themselves and the right to speak them ought to be protected.

171 Badersten p. 190 172 Ibid. p. 190 173 Ibid. p. 193 174 Swedish: “saklig” 175 Ibid. pp. 107-131 176 See Badersten pp. 133-162 for a discussion 177 Ibid. p. 137-141 178 Ibid. p. 142-144 33

The second criterion is the validity of empirical statements. Empirical statements are often used to support normative reasoning – and they should always be “based on systematic and ‘source critical’179 references from empiric material.”180 One should also motivate one’s interpretation of the material.181 I have tried to follow this advice not only in Part 3 but throughout the thesis. (The empiric material I use in Part 3 is mainly arguments of the political actors and findings from previous research.)

Third, the external plausibility and relevance of normative assessments: The conclusions of the normative assessment should be relevant to the contemporary society and possible to put into practice.182 Since the topic at hand is a hot-button issue, the assessment will be relevant. Also, my compromise-oriented approach comes in handy, since a moderate proposal is easier accepted (although maybe not loved) by the opposing sides on an issue, and therefore has a greater probability of being put into practice than a more partisan approach.

4.4.3 Not only normative, also constructive Before going further, the author must make one thing clear: Methodologically speaking, the method applied in Part 3 is not solely normative but also constructive. Badersten distinguishes between these two approaches by stating that normative assessments deal with how something should be, while constructive ones are about how something can be and how to reach this goal or possible outcome. Badersten asserts that a normative (and an empirical) analysis is the prerequisite(s) of the constructive one, and that it is common to follow-up a normative analysis with a constructive proposal.183 Vedung’s view on normative and constructive approach/method is similar to Badersten’s (although he speaks about validity testing184 and constructive idea analysis). Despite the difference between normative and constructive method, constructive assessments also rest on normative positions/statements.185 For simplicity however, I will continuously mainly refer to my argumentation/reasoning as normative. The analysis is normative in the sense that it focuses on what values/policies are good or desirable, but it is also constructive since it, on the basis of the normative analysis, suggests what to do.

4.4.4 What kind of normative analysis? At the end of this part of the chapter, let us look into what kind of normative analysis is conducted in the thesis, and what limitations that may imply. Badersten distinguishes between different forms of normative analysis. For our purposes, the “normative given that-analysis” (NGTA) and the “real” normative analysis (RNA) are relevant. The first refers to doing an analysis, given a certain point of departure in terms of values, normative logic (internal validity) and justification of values (external validity). It is common to compare lines of thoughts with different points of departure and illustrate how this leads to different conclusions. In (NGTA), the researcher does not take a stand on the issue. “Real” normative analysis is when the researcher himself argues in favour of a certain action or phenomenon, based on a set of values.186 Which kind the analysis in this thesis is, is a matter of interpretation. On the

179 Swedish: källkritiska 180 Badersten p. 192 181 Ibid. p. 193 182 Ibid. p. 192 183 Ibid. p. 38 184 Swedish: ”giltighetsprövande” 185 Vedung p. 228 186 Badersten pp. 44-47, 130-131, 165 34

one hand, I am arguing in favour of a certain approach. On the other hand, the point of departure is “set”. That is, what is a desirable approach given the values. The argumentation is to some extent based on, and connects with, the theoretical framework, earlier research and the opinions and arguments of the political actors. All points of departure are therefore not chosen “freely” from the infinite amount of values “out there”. Furthermore, there may be accounts in the body of research, not included in this thesis, that contain information that could pose valid counterarguments to the advocated approach.

4.5 Structure of analysis The analytical part of the thesis consists of three parts. Part 1 and 2 consist of the presentation and theoretical analysis of arguments of the proponents and the opponents of the reform respectively. These sections relate to the first two research questions. Both parts are divided into subsections based on key themes in the arguments, for example “alternative vision for languages of instruction” or “view on linguistic minority rights”. The headline of the subsection has the name of the theme. In each subsection, one or several of the theoretical concepts are used to analyse the arguments. The subsections in the analysis contain some overlapping material/arguments, and sometimes an argument in one subsection can be analysed also in another one. The subsections are structured in the manner that first, the arguments are presented and then they are analysed. One could say that the idea analysis (Part 1 and 2) consists of two different layers. Firstly, the arguments, or ideas if you will, of the political actors are analysed in relation to the theoretical framework. Secondly, the presentation and theoretical analysis of the arguments are divided based on the aforementioned themes.

Part 3 consists of the normative/constructive analysis, where I depart from a specific set of values and apply earlier research and (parts of) the theoretical framework. This part relates to the third research question. In this part, I will start by shortly outlining my position. The argumentation is divided into three subsections 1) The role of language in creating national unity. 2) Making Russian a co-official language? 3) Educational approach.

4.6 Critical discussion regarding method and material In this section, I will discuss issues regarding the reliability and/or bias of the sources, and how translation has affected the quality of the thesis and how it has been handled. The process of gathering material is also discussed in an open manner, in order to be transparent and increase the intersubjectivity.

4.6.1 Translation One issue regarding the scientific quality of the sources in the thesis is that a substantial part of the material has had to been translated. The author possesses some basic knowledge in Latvian (and Russian) but lacks the level of skills necessary to acquire knowledge from news articles and official texts. Therefore, translation has been required. Since the services of a professional translator are too expensive for this thesis, the author has relied on and Hugo.lv – “a Latvian state administration language technology platform (…) customized to the Latvian language and state administration documents.”187 When deemed necessary, the author has also been assisted by Latvian- speaking and Russian-speaking friends. The author is fully aware of the flaws of Google Translate’s

187 Hugo.lv 35

functioning; It is a computer-generated translation that lacks the knowledge of context, slang and other linguistic skills that a well-trained human possesses. When using Hugo.lv, one could also notice some flaws. This have been kept in mind while using translated texts. Additionally, despite limited knowledge in Latvian, the author has been able to understand the text better by looking also at the original text in Latvian. Thereby, the risk of using inadequate translations in the thesis is lowered.

4.6.2 Sources Latvijas Krievu Savieniba allegedly has ties to Kremlin, and one of the respondents, Mitrofanov, often appears commenting Latvian politics in the pro-Kremlin news network .188 189 The author is aware of this pro-Kremlin bias. Nevertheless, the party is included in the analysis because it has been one of the most outspoken opponents of the reform and it offers a pro-Russian minority perspective with regards to the role of Russian and Latvian in relation to national identity.

When describing the reform, government sources are used. The author is aware of the fact that the ministries are not neutral on this issue, and it is therefore important to distinguish descriptions of, from motivations for, the reform. The government sources have been used because they contain detailed information about the content of the reform.

One of the sources, Xinhua News, is the “official state-owned news agency in the People’s Republic of China”. According to Media Bias/Fact Check, this outlet is biased towards pro-Chinese government .190 However, since the articles used in this thesis are not related to China, the bias is probably less of a concern.

4.6.3 Choosing material As stated, the material in this thesis consists of interviews and articles. From the outset, the idea was to conduct two in-depth interviews, one with ex-minister Karlis Sadurskis and one with Miroslav Mitrofanov, co-chairman of Latvijas Krievu Savieniba, and use news articles about the reform as complementary sources. However, after realising that the availability of English articles was scarce, the author sent interview requests to all aforementioned parties. Sadly, only one additional party replied to my interview requests. (A mail was sent and a reminder one week later. Four out of six parties did not reply at all.)

I intended to stay in Latvia for several weeks in order to conduct interviews, but the outbreak of COVID- 19 forced me to, with very short notice, evacuate Latvia after just five days of stay. (The Latvian government closed the borders just a few days later). This has, of course, affected the ability to conduct the interviews. The interview with Mr. Sadurskis had to be cancelled. The new plan was to instead conduct a telephone interview or send a questionnaire. Staff from Vienotiba told me that they would try to provide answers to my questions. Sadurskis provided the elaborately written answers at a late stage in the process of writing the thesis, when most of the analysis already was done, but some parts of his answers were added.

188 See for example Sputnik (2019-12-25) 189 Vsquare (2018-10-03), EU Observer (2014-11-26) 190 Media Bias/Fact Check 36

Muizniece was contacted after the author left Latvia, due to realizations of the inaccessibility of some potential sources (see the first paragraph in this section). She was offered the alternatives of participating in a telephone interview or answering a questionnaire. She preferred the latter. The questionnaire uses the same questions as would have been used for the interview.

In a questionnaire, one cannot ask follow-up questions that arise from the way the respondent answers the question, any follow-ups need to be a part of the questionnaire from the start. Thereby, there is a risk that the researcher misses potential valuable information that was not uncovered by the original questions. However, the setbacks with using questionnaires are, in this instance, compensated by the fact that it is much better than the alternative: the respondent turning down the request. Questionnaires also have the advantage that they do not have to be transcribed, thus saving the researcher time. Although interviews generally give more data than a questionnaire, these ones had open questions and were answered quite elaborately. I therefore consider the answers to the questionnaires to contain enough information in order to be a useful source for the analysis.

Several times in the descriptive analysis, one person’s view is used to represent the party in general. There is always a risk that they are expressing their personal opinion rather than the official party stance, but since they are high-ranking officials191 of the party, the risk is probably as low as it can practically get.

191 Namely party leaders, members of parliament and a minister 37

5. Results and analysis In the first two parts of this chapter, the arguments of the political actors are analysed in relation to the theoretical framework. In the third part, the normative approach is outlined.

5.1 Part 1 – Proponents This part presents the most important findings regarding the arguments of the proponents: Vienotiba, Nacionala Apvieniba and Jauna Konservativa Partija. Statements from the MFA, the MoES and the Constitutional Court are also found in this part of the chapter.

5.1.1 Latvian – the unifying language One common thread in the arguments of the proponents of the reform is the role of the Latvian language as a basis for national unity.

The MoES “stresses that the Latvian language and culture (…) provide a unifying basis for Latvian society.”192 Muizniece says in a similar fashion that “the Latvian language and culture are at the same time the unifying basis of Latvian society”193 The MP Eriks Ojars Kalnins (V) shares Muizniece’s opinion and asserts that therefore, “the goal of society, as well as the state, is to nurture the language and ensure the long-term values of national identity, civil society and social integration.”194

Sadurskis claims that one major aim of the reform is to reduce ethnic tensions between Russians and Latvians. 195 And, according to NPR, Sadurskis holds that the “new law is intended to strengthen the civic sense of all Latvian citizens, regardless of what language they speak at home.”196 Therefore, the language reform "is necessary to implement it if we really want to create a cohesive Latvian society. With the help of the education system, it is necessary to ensure that all members of our society are loyal to Latvia and not to any other country. Therefore, general education must be in the official language."197 On the same theme, in a Diena article, Sadurskis argued that "it is infinitely naive to imagine that, studying separately, our young people will then live in a cohesive society. Sometimes we encounter such a problem in minority education programs - how do we talk about the Second World War, the occupation of Latvia?”198

Instead, if Latvian-speaking and Russian-speaking children study together “then, having matured, they will be able to live in a normal cohesive society. Simply put - then they will celebrate the same holidays, they will be loyal to our state, they will be patriots. A single education is the only way to this, otherwise it is simply impossible.”199

On this issue, when I asked Sadurskis about how the 2018 reform will affect the sense of national unity, he wrote that “the fact that our children will study together, gives me confidence that in soon future both Latvians and Russians in Latvia will consider Latvia as their motherland and will love and strengthen

192 Minstry of Education and Science 193 Muizniece (2020-04-03) 194 Saeima (2018-02-12) 195 National Public Radio (2018-10-28) 196 Ibid. 197 Latvijas Avīze (2019-12-15) 198 Diena (2018-02-08) 199 Yevropes’ka Pravda (2018-10-02) 38

Latvia. This will be an invaluable benefit. Fragmented societies are not evolving. We have taken a very important step both towards harmonious development of our country and to prevent the consequences of occupation.”200 Sadurskis also asserts that the Kremlin does not like the language transition “because this reform will greatly reduce [the] part of the public that is open to Kremlin propaganda.”201

According to Diena, Houssam Abou Mehri, leader of Vienotiba’s Saeima faction, argued in a parliamentary debate regarding the 2018 reform that “this was a matter of national dignity and existence(…) It is also important that Latvians do not live in ‘two parallel worlds’, in different media spaces. ‘Here is Latvia’, the MP said, emphasizing that the Latvian language "was, is and will be the only state language.”202

Although Sadurskis and his party emphasise the value of the Latvian language, he argues that the Latvian education system is not monolingual:

“The new standard envisages extensive multilingualism, learning foreign languages. It takes in respect the modern findings in that learning a language is not enough to learn it perfectly. This language should be used in practice, for example studying other subjects using this language as a language of instruction. This will make our education system much more open to European languages. We are a country of the , and it is only normal if every resident of Latvia is fluent in Latvian and at least two other official EU languages. One of them, according to practice, in 97% cases will be English.”203

Muizniece writes that “[o]ne of the six values defined by our party is ‘Latvian speaking nation’. In 1918 when the republic of Latvia was founded, it was done in order to ensure the eternal existence of the Latvian people, the Latvian language and culture. Therefore, we don’t support any views on Latvia as a two-community society or bilingualism in Latvia”

Raivis Dzintars, chairman of Nacionala Apvieniba, argues that their goal of a “Latvian Latvia is not and cannot be radicalism or hatred of nations. Latvian is not only the language of the Latvian people. It is the language of Latvia. The common language of all its people. Language is not just a means of communication, it is the dividing line between one's own and another's.” In a similar fashion, he argued on the day that the reform passed the third reading in the Saeima that "’Latvian language belongs not only to the Latvian people’ and that it should not be perceived as a threat to ethnic minorities.”204

A monolingual, but ethnically inclusive, imagined community

The last sentence from Dzintars’ quote shows a view of the language that is very similar to the German Romantics’ view: that language is “an outward sign of a group’s particular identity and a significant means of ensuring its continuation.”205 However, the nationalist leader does not want to limit the community united by the Latvian language to “Latvian people”206, all residents of Latvia are welcome to be a part of it. In relation to the concept of a monolingual/-cultural or multilingual/-cultural imagined community, Dzintars approach is a bit surprising. It builds on the idea of an imagined community based on monolingualism, but at the same time, it does not require ethnic homogeneity. It is surprising

200 Sadurskis (2020-05-10) 201 Yevropes’ka Pravda (2018-10-02) 202 Diena (2018-02-08) 203 Sadurskis (2020-05-10) 204 Xinhua News (2018-03-23 205 Kedourie (1960) p. 71 in May p.58 206 I interpret this as referring to “ethnic Latvians” 39

because of the link that often, albeit not always, exists between language and ethnicity.207 Similarly, Sadurskis’s will to “strengthen the civic sense of all Latvian citizens, regardless of what language they speak at home”208 can be seen as an attempt to establish an imagined community that welcomes all ethnicities under the uniting banner of the Latviešu valoda.

The view that Latvian is a unifying element in the Latvian society rests upon the notion that the official language and the civic culture of the dominant ethnie is (or should be) in a hegemonic position that makes the culture and language of the ethnic Latvians seem neutral. It is because Latvians are the dominant ethnie that Latvian can be perceived as the neutral, unifying language of the territory that is the Republic of Latvia – “the common language of all its people”, as Dzintars asserts.

Sadurskis’s argument about a linguistically unified education system as a requirement for creating a cohesive society of citizens that are loyal to Latvia, can be seen as a modern-day example of the Jacobin slogan “the unity of the Republic demands the unity of speech”. Abou Mehri’s statement on avoiding living in “two parallel worlds” and Muizniece’s opposition to a “two communities-society” can also be connected with the Jacobin slogan. To be fair, none of the proponents included in this thesis has argued that speaking Russian in itself is a threat to the unity of the country, but rather that it is vital that all inhabitants are proficient in Latvian. The proponent side therefore defends a “milder” form of monolingualism than the Jacobins. The argument of a linguistically unified education system as a requirement for social cohesion can also be seen as an example of a monolingual imagined community. It is, however, hard to conclude that Sadurskis argues in favour of a fully monolingual imagined community, since he emphasizes the importance of learning languages of other EU member states, including learning other subjects with instruction in that particular language.

The reform is also justified in terms of decreasing the number of persons susceptible to “Kremlin propaganda”. This reasoning bears some resemblance to the “hatred of Republic speaks German”-line of thought. However, in this case it is not that speaking Russian makes you an enemy of the state, but rather that not understanding enough Latvian may potentially lead to political/security risks.

As Sadurskis suggests, using the education system as a means of ensuring loyalty to the state sounds reminiscent of what Kedourie writes about nationalist education, that the goal is “to bend the will of the young to the will of the nation”. Kalnins’s statement also has points of contact with “bending the will of the young”, since the state should “nurture the language and ensure the long-term values of national identity…” through (among other means) the education system. However, based on a holistic view on what the proponents of the reform has said, it would seem far-fetched that Sadurskis’s and his political allies’ view of the purpose of education is just to “bend the will of the young” and “not to transmit knowledge, traditional wisdom, and the ways devised by a society for attending to the common concerns”.209

207 See for example May p. 129 208 National Public Radio (2018-10-28) 209 Kedourie pp. 83-84 40

5.1.2 View on linguistic minority rights Though being in favour of Latvian as the main language of instruction in all schools, proponents support rights for different ethnic groups to preserve their language and culture.

Muizniece states that every citizen belongs to Latvia and should be a Latvian patriot. Though the party wishes for Latvia to be culturally and linguistically united under the Latvian language and culture, other ethnic groups should also have rights to preserve theirs:

”All our citizens together form the Latvian nation or political nation, and it is necessary to strive everyone being a patriot of our country. Those citizens who do not belong to Latvians ethnically are traditionally considered to be representatives of national minorities in Latvia, which have always been supported. However, no minority may be more privileged than others, just as no minority language may be more privileged than the others. The state must create conditions for the members of national minorities not to being strictly separated in their parallel worlds, but being included in the Latvian language, culture, , and at the same time, if they so wish, to be able to preserve their language and culture. Therefore, with careful preparation, a unified school system should be introduced in the state language, within which minority children can also be taught their language and history.”210

Regarding the importance of native Russian-speakers knowing Latvian, Muizniece wrote that:

”I personally believe that every nation should keep their language as the value and maintain its usage for the language’s continuality among the native speakers. However, I support the point of view that the people living in one or another country should know, learn, use, respect and value the language of the country they live in.”211

Furthermore, about the need for Latvian-speakers to know Russian she said: “I think being proficient in Russian for Latvians is not very necessary for their everyday lives, however it may give some better opportunities in the field of employability as knowing any other foreign language which can be considered as an advantage.”212 She did not see “any role in terms of national identity for minority languages.”213

Dzintars (NA) states that

“The school must be a place where, step by step, everyone becomes their own - a part of Latvia, not clinging to the fading ghosts of the past. Concern for the preservation of the minority language and culture is understandable and respectable. No one can take away a language or a culture from a family that wants to preserve and nurture it. The state must welcome and support this choice. But it is also necessary to be able to draw the line where this support is already at the expense of state funds. Today, the legislator has expressed the will to draw this line.”214

When the 2018 reform was passed in the Saeima, (NA) stated clearly that their goal is a full transition to instruction in Latvian at all levels of education.215

Sadurskis asserted that other ethnic groups’ rights are to be respected. To LSM, he said that “by implementing the transition to Latvian as the sole language of instruction, the role of the Latvian language will be strengthened, but, at the same time, the peculiarities and development of different

210 Muizniece (2020-04-03) 211 Ibid. 212 Ibid. 213 Ibid. 214 Nacionala apvieniba (2018-03-22) 215 Nacionala apvieniba (2018-03-22) 41

ethnic cultures will be also ensured.”216 In an interview with the Ukrainian newspaper Європейська правда (Yevropeysʹka Pravda, English: European Truth) Sadurskis said the following:

“The task of a civilized country is to give representatives of the minority the opportunity to develop their national language, their culture. This is what our education system provides. We moderately and proportionally add a share of the state language to the educational system at all levels, from to university.”217

Sadurskis also rejects the notion that the reform is about assimilation:

“[The] acquisition of mainly in the state language (it can, of course, also be called a restriction to obtain secondary in Russian) is in no way oriented towards the assimilation of minority youth. [The] education system guaranties them the opportunity to study subjects such as their mother tongue, literature and modules related to national culture at the expense of the state.”218

The Latvian MFA states that “[D]uring and after the reform, the national minority education programmes will continue guaranteeing that the national minorities can preserve and develop their language and their ethnic and cultural identity, in accordance the Constitution of the Republic of Latvia.”219 Regarding the 2018 reform, the MoES writes that “transitioning to teaching in the state language in secondary schools means its role in Latvia will be strengthened, further ensuring the uniqueness and development of the diverse cultures of the different nationalities residing in Latvia.”220

Tolerance-oriented views, or?

It is a little bit difficult to interpret what Dzintars means stating that everyone should become a part of Latvia instead of “clinging to the fading ghosts of the past”. It does, though, sound quite similar to the thoughts of Skutnabb-Kangas: that the majority tries to convince the minority that it is “small and backward”221 and that it has “’everything to gain from merging into greater nations’(…) and that their languages are ‘doomed to disappear’”.222 (See also section 2.3)

Muizniece holds that all citizens in Latvia, regardless of ethnicity, belong to the political nation of Latvia, and should therefore be a part of the Latvian imagined community. Minorities have a right to preserve and use their language, but at the same time, she wants them to be integrated into the Latvian language and culture. This line of thought is similar to that of Dzintars and Sadurskis (see section 5.1.1) – a politically imagined community that encompasses all its citizens, regardless of ethnicity, but which in terms of language is monolingual.

Dzintars seems to have a tolerance-oriented approach to linguistic minority rights. The state “must welcome and support” the choice of families to preserve their native language, but support in the form of state-funding may be a bridge too far. This implies an emphasis on preservation of language in the private sphere. Other proponents also display tolerance- rather than promotion-oriented views. As Muizniece argues, one should preserve one’s native language for usage among native speakers. Sadurskis says civilized countries should “give representatives of the minority the opportunity to

216 LSM (2018-01-23) 217 Yevropes’ka Pravda (2018-10-02) 218 Sadurskis (2020-05-10) 219 Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2018-06-18) 220 Latvian Ministry of Education and Science 221 Skutnabb-Kangas p. 178 222 Ibid. 42

develop their national language, their culture”223, which he argues that the 2018 reform leaves room for. However, the proponents are convinced that the instruction in schools should be primarily in the valsts valoda. It is, though, a bit complicated to analyse the proponents’ stance in relation to this concept of rights. On the one hand, promotion-oriented policies such as state-funding to schools instructing primarily in another language than Latvian is not proposed by any of the parties. Actually, the proponents defend a reform that restricts the use of Russian as a language of instruction even in private schools, which is an infringement of rights also at the tolerance-oriented level. On the other hand, this reform allows for some instruction in Russian, in tax-funded primary schools. It also leaves room for studying, for example, the Russian language and literature in Russian at the high school level.

5.1.3 Learning Latvian – the key to equal opportunities One common argument from the proponents is that the effects of the reform will create equal opportunities for all students in Latvia to build a career and participate in public life.

According to the Latvian MFA, a principal aim of the 2018 reform is “to ensure that all school graduates have equal command of the Latvian language for a successful and competitive entry into labour market in Latvia or for the continuation of their studies.”224 The MoES writes a bit more elaborately that

“the aim of the changes is to provide every child in Latvia with equal access to a high-quality education that will help them to acquire the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary in the 21st century. The new regulation on the language of instruction will expand the opportunities for minority youth in vocational and higher education, where Latvian is the language of instruction, as well as improve their competitiveness in the labour market.”225

The MoES sees that there is a real need to increase the proficiency in Latvian among minority students, since according to the report “Language Situation in Latvia: 2010-2015” 39 percent of young minority people have acquired fluency in Latvian, and “the same percentage of young people speak Latvian well, while 22% admit that they have only acquired basic Latvian language skills or have poor knowledge of Latvian.”226

The chairperson of the Education, Culture and Science Committee in the Saeima, Aldis Adamovics (V) stated that “having the official language as the language of instruction is an important prerequisite for ensuring equal opportunities to all youths”227. Kalnins (V) emphasized that “young people must be given a level playing field so that, after graduating from high school, they are able to study at public , regardless of their nationality.”

Karlis Sadurskis argues that the state has an

“obligation to ensure that the regulatory framework for education is such that no graduate suffers discrimination in the labour market because of his or her poor language skills. Therefore, our legislation provides for three graduations in terms of language use and priorities: 1. Latvian, 2. other official EU languages, 3. other languages.”228

The Constitutional Court made a statement defending the constitutionality of the language reform. Xinhuanet reports that:

223 Yevropes’ka Pravda (2018-10-02) 224 Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2018-06-18) 225 Latvian Ministry of Education and Science 226 Ibid. 227 Saeima (2018-03-22) 228 Sadurskis (2020-05-10) 43

“Ineta Ziemele, chief judge of the Latvian Constitutional Court, told reporters that the ruling in this case was significant in that it required taking a broader look at Latvia's society.

‘We concluded that the amendments to the education law were another step towards providing each citizen and resident of Latvia with the level of language proficiency necessary to obtain information and engage in the public discourse," said Ziemele. "At last, there will be an opportunity for all high school graduates to participate in debates,’ said the chief judge.”229

Learning the dominant language – a path to opportunity or to losing your identity?

The Vienotiba politicians Kalnins and Adamovics, the MFA and the MoES argue that the reform increases the competitiveness of pupils belonging to a national minority, thereby ensuring “equal opportunity for all”. Sadurskis’s statement is in line with the previous ones and implies that Latvian, since it is ranked highest in terms of priority, is the way to ensure that “no graduate suffers discrimination in the labour market because of his or her poor language skills.”230 The chief justice of the Constitutional Court claims that knowledge in Latvian is a prerequisite for equal participation in the public debate. These arguments rest upon the assumption that the language of the dominant ethnie, and the related civic culture, is politically neutral. According to Nelde, speakers of other languages must assimilate, “renounce their social ambitions”231 or resist if they are to “gain greater access to the public realm”.232 To be fair, the chief justice does not argue in favour of Russian-speakers renouncing their linguistic identity, but the acquisition of the state language is nevertheless seen as the natural way to gain access to the public arena.

Hogan-Brun found in her research that increasing the share of instruction in Latvian will “compete with the identity values associated with the minority languages, especially Russian.”233 If this is the case, having to learn in Latvian to get equal opportunities can be seen in relation to May’s discussion of the perceived trade-off between preserving one’s linguistic and cultural identity and gaining career-related opportunities. If Russian-speakers feel that instruction in Latvian only threatens their linguistic identity, then, according to Howe, these opportunities are not worth much. What’s more, the idea that instruction in Latvian for all students is required in order to give the same opportunities for all, have its correspondent at Stage 2 in Churchill’s model. Students with a mother tongue other than the official language are unfortunate and in need of extra help to learn the official/dominant language and thereby get on equal footing with the native speakers of the dominant language. To be nuanced, the pro-reform parties do not seem to strive for the total linguistic assimilation of Russian-speakers, Muizniece even thinks minorities should preserve their native language (see section 5.1.3). The goal is just proficiency in Latvian.

229 Xinhua News (2019-04-24) 230 Sadurskis (2020-05-10) 231 May p. 152 232 Nelde (1997) in May p. 152 233 Hogan-Brun p. 330 44

5.2 Part 2 – Opponents This section presents the most important findings regarding the arguments of the opponents: Saskana and Latvijas Krievu Savieniba.

5.2.1 “Latvian only” threatens the social cohesion Mitrofanov told the author, when asked about the importance of the Latvian language, that

“It is one of the languages of our native country. So, for me, Latvian is a part of my identity. When I served in Soviet army in the 80’s, I tried to find some Latvian in order to speak to him because it is part of my motherland. So, I am happy that I can read, understand and speak Latvian. I would be much poorer in the cultural sphere. I will lose some part of my identity if I cannot speak and receive information in Latvian. So, I do not have any negative attitude or feelings against the Latvian language. It’s the language of our neighbours, friends and relatives. But when Latvian politicians tell us that we must (emphasis) use this language because it is the state language, in this case negative attitude is… emerging. If the Latvian language is a part of our everyday life, a part of our state, our nation – it’s okay. But when it is a tool for suppression and discrimination, we are protesting.”234

Mitrofanov holds that the reform affects the national unity negatively, creating conflict between ethnic groups.

“It raises the hate in the hearts of Russian-speakers. I think, if it would be possible to choose the programs of education, many Russian-speakers will choose the programs, where the Latvian language is dominating. But if it is imposed from the authorities the reaction is negative. By imposing the education in Latvian only the authorities show they do not see us as members of the society. They see us as only as objects of manipulation. The reform is an evidently political step, it is not grounded by any practical circumstances or reasons.” 235

According to Mitrofanov, the reform is just a part of a larger political struggle by the “Latvian political elite” to eliminate Russian in the public sphere and to force the linguistic assimilation of Russians in Latvia: “The purpose [of the reform] is to make the local non-Latvians, Russian-speaking population to switch to speak Latvian in all circumstances or all spheres of life in Latvia. To promote the total linguistic assimilation.”236

He does not think this reform is the final step in the quest for a monolingual Latvia:

“We must understand that this is not the last stage of linguistic reforms promoted by the nationalistic parties and the state. I think that in ten years, they will perform the next step. Next step, it will be completely pushing out the Russian language as a tool of instruction from the school forms 1st through 9th. In result, the Russian language will become an optional subject. The state may allow some additional classes chosen by students and their parents. The next step might be performed in 15 years, and it will be the complete ban on Russian even as optional subject”.237

Mitrofanov argues that Latvian politicians have a long history of either expelling or linguistically assimilating non-Latvians: Germans, Jews and Poles during the previous century, “now it’s time for the Russian community to be assimilated or pushed out from the territory of Latvia.” However, even after assimilation, Latvians will dislike Russians:

234 Mitrofanov (2020-03-11) 235 Ibid. 236 Ibid. 237 Ibid. 45

“Latvian elite is not going to share the access to the good jobs, to the privileged positions in state administration and prestigious professions with the local Russians, even after the community would be linguistically assimilated. So, in the nearest future there will be the two types of schools: the schools for the Latvian majority, where Latvian is used as the tool of education. The mother tongue of Latvians. And the separate schools for non-Latvians, where also Latvian is used as the only language of instruction. The reason is to prevent the mixture of two communities, because the majority of Latvian parents, even if they are not nationalistic in their ideas, they do not accept the situation where half of the class in [a] Latvian school are from Russian families.”238

I asked him how LKS’s vision for the education system (see in section 5.2.3) will balance values such as human rights and national unity, presenting the hypothetical argument that a bilingual school and society will not bring the Latvian population together. Mitrofanov replied:

“Latvian politicians say that they need the school reform in order to create the united nation. Their motto is “one nation, one language, one culture”. So, the fascist approach. No differences inside society and you can speak your native language at home, but not in streets and not in establishments and not at job places. We reject such an approach, we run against because we see that the most successful countries in the world, for example Singapore or Luxembourg, which in terms of population are more or less the same as Latvia, are multilingual societies. They use different languages and it’s one of the sources of their strength.“239

Further, (LKS) advocates making Russian a local co-official language in municipalities where at least 20 percent of the population are Russian-speakers. However, the party was at first reluctant to support the initiative for the referendum on making Latvian a second state language.240

Saskana has argued that the “legal regulation introduced as a result of the education reform restricts the use of minority languages in the teaching process, promoting the disregard for the legitimate interests of children.”241 In the parliamentary debates preceding the passing of the reform, Igor Pimenov, (S) argued against it, “emphasizing that this is the second wave of Latvianization of minority education.”242 He also claimed that

"the whole idea has an obvious political goal, namely, to strengthen the recognition of coalition parties in the 13th Saeima elections. This could be treated with irony if it did not harm the interests of the population and pose risks to the cohesion of society as a whole. This reform is poisonous and leaves no choice but to vote against."243

Additionally, Pimenov have asserted that "to a great extent, the stability of the Latvian state and the situation of the Latvian language depend on the ethnic minorities' future."244

238 Mitrofanov (2020-03-11) 239 Ibid. 240 Ibid. 241 (2020-01-15) 242 Diena (2018-02-08) 243 Skaties (2018-02-22) 244 Xinhuanet (2018-03-22) 46

Multilingualism – not assimilatory monolingualism

Mitrofanov’s thoughts, that the reform will not increase the opportunities for Russian-speakers but is just a tool of supressing their linguistic identity, bears resemblance with the Chinese reform of Tibetan schools.245 Just as improving Tibetan children’s “educational attainment” was just a coverup for the real reason, to combat Tibetan linguistic identity, the talk about teaching in Latvian to give equal opportunities for all is bogus, according to Mitrofanov. The Latvian political establishment just wants to promote linguistic assimilation.

The position of (S) and (LKS), that the reform and its effects are detrimental to the national unity, can be theoretically understood in relation to the notion that not being responsive to an ethnic group’s demands for linguistic rights may very well lead to more tension, and even secessionism. It is safe to say that the opponents do not believe in the concept that the “Unity of the Republic demands the unity of speech”.

Mitrofanov clearly supports a multilingual Latvia and rejects what he calls “one nation, one language, one culture”. Some of the most prosperous countries in the world are multilingual, which he argues is a source of strength. An imagined community based on multilingualism, where several languages are a part of the public sphere, is seen as the way forward.

5.2.2 Study results will fall – not equal opportunities Saskana has warned that the language reform will result in deterioration of the education quality in minority schools, which decreases the students’ competitiveness in comparison with students in “ethnically Latvian” schools. This is not least due to the fact that “there is no certainty that teachers are sufficiently competent and ready for this reform.”246 This argument is interesting, since it challenges the link that the proponents make between studying (mainly) in Latvian and increasing the students’ competitiveness and opportunities. It also suggests that the choice Secada and Lightfoot refers to - “give up your language and you might have opportunity”247 – is an illusion, since not learning in your native language might decrease your educational attainment and thereby your career opportunities.

5.2.3 Alternative vision for languages of instruction Saskana wants a system where all students learn at least three languages. In an article in Latvijas Avize, the party stated its views: "Let's transform this reform by improving the ability to learn and use three to four languages in the curriculum for all students, regardless of their mother tongue. Strengthening the quality of Latvian language acquisition for all children and students.”248 Neatkariga Rita Avize reported before the election in 2018 that Saskana have gone from supporting a bilingual to a trilingual curriculum: "All pupils will be fluent in Latvian, minority children will be fluent in their mother tongue and one or two foreign languages."249

The party also explains, when talking about a full transition to instruction in Latvian that: "We unequivocally support the position that the education system must promote the quality acquisition of

245 May p. 171 246 Xinhua News (2019-04-24), Saeima (2018-02-12) 247 May p.169 248 Latvijas Avīze (2018-09-11) 249 Neatkarīgā Rīta Avīze (2018-09-30) 47

the Latvian language at all levels of education."250 However, the party strongly disagrees with the notion that the optimal way to achieve this is to deny students from national minorities instruction in their mother tongue.251

Mitrofanov presents his party’s vision for languages of instruction in the quote below:

“In the ideal case, all the schools in Latvian must be mixed, without any restrictions for non-Latvians to be students at Latvian schools. Now, we don’t have formal restrictions prescribed on the level of the law. But really, there are unwritten rules. (…) So, it is number one: the children must be taught together in order to create united nation but not split in several. Then, both languages must be used in education in different subjects for example, and… Latvian, Russian language must be taught in these schools. Some parts of the curriculum must be in Latvian, some parts in Russian, and some parts in English. Beginning from the high school252 level, English must be the main tool of instruction. (…) But we see the ideal case that both languages, local languages, must be used as a tool of instruction in all Latvian schools”253

Mitrofanov explains that this is how it should be ideally, but that they are ready to compromise with their political opponents, and the compromise solution he has in mind is

“the development of two parallel systems of education of both Latvian schools and Russian schools and some other minority schools. And in such case, in Russian schools of course the Russian language may be, must be, the main tool of instruction, at all stages. Of course, Latvian must also be used as a tool of instruction for some subjects which are related to the , to Latvian culture, literature and so. (…) We are open for Latvian culture and language and it’s [a] very good way how to receive additional lessons in Latvian, to use it [in] some subjects and so on. But in our case, the state and the ruling parties they deny such a possibility to participate in choosing the program. So, if you are a parent in a minority school, you have no choice.”254

Additionally, the news site LV Portals reports that (LKS) has the “most radical” policies: “to introduce compulsory teaching of Russian in all Latvia’s schools and to promote the abolition of restrictions on the use of the Russian language in education.”255

Multilingual education and promotion-oriented rights

While both (LKS) and (S) wants a multilingual education system, the (LKS) appears to be the most hard- line promoter of Russian-language instruction in schools. Nonetheless, in relation to Churchill’s model, both parties’ policies fit best on Stage 5 or 6. (LKS) wants mandatory education in Russian for all Latvian students, which can be understood in relation to that formal multilingualism (Stage 6) means that the dominant ethnie has to “accommodate minority groups and their language(s) in all shared domains (at least in theory).”256 The education system is just one of the “shared domains” in a society, still, the (LKS) policy is in line with the general theme of Stage 6: that the non-dominant ethnic groups are accommodated not assimilated. Saskana also wants multilingual education, but it is not clear whether everyone should learn Russian, or if it is just native Russian-speakers who should have the opportunity to learn it. What is clear, however, is that Saskana views minority languages as having linguistic and

250 Neatkarīgā Rīta Avīze (2019-09-25) This quote refers to the discussion about a full transition to Latvian as the language of instruction. Nonetheless, the general point they are making here applies also to the 2018 reform: that (S) are in favour of high-quality education in Latvian, but against abolishing/severely decreasing the instruction in a minority language. 251 Neatkarīgā Rīta Avīze (2019-09-25) 252 There may be a confusion of terms here, since the term for “college” in Latvian, Augstskola, literally translates into “high school”. 253 Mitrofanov (2020-03-11) 254 Ibid. 255 LV Portals (2018-08-29) 256 May p. 178 48

cultural benefits, both for the minority itself and the wider society (see quotes in section 5.2.1), which is a characteristic of Stage 5.

The opponents’ vision for language of instruction in schools is clearly promotion-oriented: they argue in favour of the availability of instruction in a minority language in the schools, which are all tax-funded.

Like Sadurskis, Mitrofanov argues that a unified education system is necessary in order to create national unity. However, according to Mitrofanov this unified school system should be bi- or multilingual in terms of language of instruction. Creating a unified, multilingual education system can be seen as one part in creating a multilingual imagined community.

49

5.3 Part 3 - Normative and constructive approach In this section, I will present and argue for my normative and constructive approach. Since I have a social constructivist approach, implying that a nation is a socially constructed, or imagined, community, I believe this community can be extended to encompass all of the inhabitants within a state.

My overarching goal is, as stated, to create an inclusive imagined community. When striving for a balanced approach, there is a tension between two of the foundational values that must be considered: On the one hand, Russian-speakers should have linguistic rights. On the other hand, Latvian is a quite small language that may need extra “protection” vis-a-vis Russian to survive in the long run. It also seems rather intuitive that the Latvian language ought to have a strong position in the only country in the world where it is widely spoken.

Next, there is a discussion regarding the role of language with regards to national unity, and, more specifically, the roles that Latvian and Russian ought to have in the Latvian imagined community. Then, the official status of Russian is discussed. The chapter ends with a suggestion with regards to language policy in the education sector, and conclusions.

5.3.1 The role of language in creating national unity I bear in mind what Ernest Renan stated, that “language may invite us to unite but it does not compel us to do so.” In the case of Latvia, however, the importance of language for national identity and unity appears to be quite large. Proponents of the reform argue that the Latvian language is of vital importance for the social cohesion and sense of nationhood. Although the opponents of the reform do not emphasize the Latvian language as a unifier in the same way as the proponents do, they regard learning Latvian as important, and Mitrofanov views Latvian as a part of his identity.

As stated, the German Romantics viewed language as “an outward sign of a group’s particular identity and a significant means of ensuring its continuation.”257 However, it is another question whether a language can have this unifying role for everyone in a nation-state, even those that have another mother tongue. The very concept of a “national” or official language rests, as we have discussed earlier, on the idea that the language (and culture) of the ethnic majority is neutral. I agree with May’s view that this is not the case. However, even if it is not neutral, can the mother tongue of the dominant ethnie, Latvian, potentially be something that unifies all its residents? In one way, yes. For practical reasons, it is necessary for a society to have a common means of communication, a lingua franca. I argue it makes the most sense that the language spoken as a mother tongue of the popular majority should have this role, since it is the alternative that requires the least amount of people to learn a new language. It is probably unrealistic to expect Russian-speakers to place a higher value, in terms of identity, on a second language than their native language, but that is not even necessary. It is enough that Russian-speakers identify (also) as Latvians and recognise that Latvian is the mother tongue of most of their compatriots. On the other hand, Latvian-speakers should recognise that Russian is one of the major languages spoken in Latvia, and that Russian-speakers also should be a part of the imagined community that is the Latvian nation258/society.

257 Kedourie (1960) p. 71 in May p.58 258 If nation is only about ethnicity, it is problematic/confusing to call ethnic Russians a part of the Latvian nation. 50

5.3.2 Making Russian a co-official language? Latvian is a small language with less than two million native speakers, spoken widely only in Latvia. Russian is a large language spoken natively by around 150 million people and an additional 100 million as a second language.259 It is an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Russian is also used for official functions in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and is spoken widely260 in , Moldova and Estonia.261 Therefore, while Russian is a minority language in Latvia, Latvian is a language that has traits of being a minority language in (its part of) the world. In order to be preserved into the future, Latvian may very well require the institutional support of being the sole official language.262 Since Russian is a much larger language, spoken as a lingua franca in Eastern and Central Asia, it is not unlikely that Russian would grow in influence at the expense of Latvian, if Latvian did not have the institutional advantage in the form of being the single official language and supported by a comprehensive language law. This position is supported by what May writes about language shift (see section 3.3). If the share of native Latvian-speakers proficient in Russian is higher than the Russian- speakers in Latvian, this increases the probability that Russian will be the language of interethnic communication. This in turn, is (likely) a step towards language shift. However, it is not clear whether this is actually the case in Latvia. (Paulston & Heidemann and Languageknowledge.eu offer different accounts on this.)263

The argument that the Latvian language needs extra protection is also to be found among the respondent parties. In his submitted answers, Sadurskis writes the following about the need for, and reasons to, give the Latvian language extra protection:

“During the Soviet occupation, mass Russification and assimilation of other nations took place. In Latvia, it primarily affected all Slavic peoples living here - Ukrainians, Poles, Belarusians. They became so-called Russian speakers. Consequently, the national minorities of Latvia have a common language - Russian, which had become a language of integration (or assimilation) during the Soviet occupation. But the language of social integration in Latvia must be Latvian. I think this thesis does not require proof. The Latvian language must function fully in all spheres of state life. Including those where it is under massive pressure from world languages of greater economic value, such as English or Russian. Therefore, in order not to be squeezed out of any niche, [the] state language needs additional legislative protection.”264

In favour of granting Russian official status in Latvia is the argument we find in Skerrett’s research, that it, in the long term, can increase “the feeling of belonging to the country.” This is highly relevant because a sense of belonging is crucial in creating a cohesive imagined community. Furthermore, since Russian is spoken as a native language among such a large percentage of the population there is indeed a serious argument to be made for giving the language an official status, based on representation.

However, there are at least two other possible objections to be made against making Russian co-official state language. Firstly, since the status of languages is a highly divisive issue, it could create more ethnic tensions instead of less, at least in the short term. Even the (LKS) did not (initially) support the initiative to hold a referendum on this issue in 2012, because they deemed it to divisive. Secondly, even if granting Russian official status would promote a sense of belonging, it is unlikely to happen, at least on a national level. The no-side won decisively in the 2012 referendum, and it’s unlikely that results would be much different was a new referendum to be held today, not least since ethnicity seems to have been a

259 Russia Beyond (2018-05-10) 260 Defined as being the first or second language by more than 30 percent of the population. 261 World Population Review (2020), Arefev (2012) 262 May p. 150 263 See 3.3 and 1.5 respectively 264 Sadurskis (2020-05-10) 51

major determinant in voting behaviour.265 With all things considered, I do not recommend making Russian a second national official language. I reach this conclusion mainly due to the facts that it may contribute to the language decline of the Latviešu valoda, and that, due to the divisive nature of the issue, it threatens to do more harm than good for the social cohesion of the Latvian nation.

5.3.3 Educational approach In relation to the views of the opponents and proponents of the 2018 reform, this normative/constructive approach intends to be moderate. My position is that Latvian ought to retain the dominant position in the education system. At the same time, there should be a place for learning Russian – for all students. This is in line with what May argues:

“there is a strong argument for schools extending and reconstituting what counts as ‘accepted’ and ‘acceptable’ cultural and linguistic knowledge. Moreover, the charge that such recognition would inevitably lead to a rampant cultural and linguistic relativism does not necessarily follow .(…) In short, greater ethnolinguistic democracy does not necessarily imply ethnolinguistic equality.”266

In line with the compromising approach, I also argue that Latvian lawmakers should take into account how people view and value language. As Romanov found, having a favourable view towards the Latvian language and culture makes people more willing to learn the language. Therefore, politicians that are keen on promoting the status of the Latvian language should be concerned with making sure that the majority culture and language are viewed favourably among Russian-speakers. Also, in line with what Cara found in her study, “minority students” want to be able to speak Latvian, as long as they are also able to speak Russian. It is an important insight that Hogan-Brun discusses: the salient role of Latvian in schooling might compete with a Russian identity. In line with Secada & Lightfoot and Howe, I argue that the acquiring of another language (and thus more “opportunities”) should not be done at the expense of one’s identity. In conclusion, language policies (in education) must strive to improve Latvian proficiency without threating the linguistic identity of Russian-speakers, since it is both counterproductive and wrong, given my set of values/assumptions.

One of the reasons why the 2018 reform is needed, proponents argue, is that a large share of the young members of national minorities have low levels of knowledge in Latvian. All the parties represented in this thesis agree that Latvian is an important language for Latvia, and that pupils should learn it. With regards to language of instruction, I deem the proportions stipulated by the 2018 reform to be satisfactory. In order to ensure the long-term survival of Latvian, it needs to be “reproduced” in the education system. As May holds, education is a primary tool in preserving a language.267

Having the possibility to learn and preserve your native language has an intrinsic value, since language is many times a vital part of one’s identity. In order to do this, I argue that schools should offer good opportunities for Russian-speaking students to become proficient in their language.

Now to the controversial part. In the education system, Russian should be one of the languages that all students, including native Latvian-speakers, study. The reason is that the education system is one of the ways that the state reproduces what is deemed as the national language and culture.268 According to Gellner, it has historically been the language of the dominant ethnie that has been reproduced as the

265 Reuters (2012-02-17) , The Guardian (2012-02-19), BBC (2012-02-19) 266 May p. 168 267 Ibid. p. 167 268 Ibid. p. 168 52

unifying language. However, in order to create an inclusive imagined community, the education system needs to account for the fact that the population of Latvia is (mainly) bilingual269 in terms of native language, and also, to some extent, “reproduce” the Russian language.

I am aware of the fact that, for historical reasons, Latvian-speakers may feel reluctant to think of Russian as a part of the linguistic identity of Latvia. Russian was imposed as the prestige language in Latvia during the occupation of the Soviet Union, and many Russian-speakers migrated into Latvia during a period when Latvia had no national sovereignty. However, reproducing Russian as a part of the linguistic identity of the Latvian imagined community is not about “Russifying” Latvia. Latvia is not, and should not be, a miniature version of Russia. The Latvian national identity is unique among the nation-states, and the Latvian language should continue to be one of the most prominent markers of this identity. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that a Russian minority of not insignificant size lived in Latvia also before the Soviet occupation.270 The point with this proposal is that Russian-speakers are inhabitants of Latvia and since they ought to be included in the Latvian imagined community, the language they speak, which is part of their ethnic identity, should be seen as a part of what constitutes the Latvian imagined community linguistically.

According to the National Centre for Education of the Republic of Latvia (VISC), students in schools that implement the general education programs and have instruction only in Latvian (the “mainstream” Latvian schools) can study Russian as a second foreign language from 4th grade starting the academic year of 2020/2021. As of now, students can study Russian as a second language starting from 6th grade. I do not aspire to make any specific recommendations regarding for how many years and/or how many hours per week students should study Russian. Nonetheless, due to the reasons outlined above, I argue that it should be studied as a mandatory language and that students should acquire at least elementary knowledge in Russian.

Conclusion

In short, I argue for an imagined community where Latvian retains its dominant position as the sole official language and the primary language of instruction in schools. The language should be learned and embraced by all residents. At the same time, the Russian language should be acknowledged as a valuable part of Latvia’s linguistic composition.

269 Of course, there are also a number of other languages are spoken natively in Latvia, so it is actually more accurate to say multilingual. But since focus of this thesis is limited to the sizable Russian minority, the term bilingual is used. 270 Preidite p. 2 53

6. Discussion and conclusions In this chapter, the findings of the thesis are discussed in relation to the research questions and previous research. Limits regarding the findings are discussed and suggestions to further research are given.

The two main reasons for the reform that are offered by proponents are: unifying the country through strengthening the role of the Latvian language in education and giving everyone equal opportunities by ensuring equal proficiency in the valsts valoda. The view of Latvian as the unifying language is an expression of the monolingual way to create the imagined community. An example of this view is that Sadurskis emphasizes that when all Latvian children are learning in the same language, it will lead to a future of cohesion, where all Latvians “celebrate the same holidays” and are loyal to Latvia. Furthermore, Latvian as the main language of instruction strengthens the national unity by reducing the susceptibility to “Kremlin propaganda”. The view that equal opportunities in life requires proficiency in Latvian is based on the implicit assumption that the language of the politically dominant ethnie is, and ought to be, the dominant language in society. According to the proponents, the reform is in the best interest of members of all ethnic groups and is not an action that is deliberatively oppressive towards ethnic non-Latvians. With regards to views of linguistic rights of minorities, the proponents argue in favour of views that can be categorized mainly as tolerance-oriented rights, with some tendencies towards a promotion-oriented approach.

The opponents, on their part, argue that the national unity is threatened by what they describe as an assimilatory reform. Rather than pursuing a divisive monolingualism in the school system, the Latvian imagined community ought to be constructed by a multilingualist approach that acknowledges Russian- speakers as a part of the linguistic composition of Latvia. This implies that Russian-speakers also have the right to instruction in their mother tongue. The opponents advocate a promotion-oriented approach to linguistic rights, and in relation to Churchills model, they want policies for the education system that correspond to Stages 5 and 6. The notion of “the unity of the Republic demands the unity of speech” is thus firmly rejected.

In relation to Skerrett’s research, one can see some similarity between the proponents’ view on the role of Latvian language and the Lithuanian idea that in order to be fully Lithuanian, one needs to acquire the . To be nuanced, the arguments of the reform’s proponents do not focus explicitly on the individual level, i.e. a person has to speak the Latvian language to become Latvian, but rather on the national level: the Latvian language is the single unifying language of the Latvian society. Nonetheless, there is a common denominator between the two cases: language is central to the national identity. Some of the arguments of the proponents and opponents can be understood in relation to Pavlenko’s dichotomy: the rights of a language to “survive” versus the rights of speakers to speak their language. Sadurskis argues that the Latvian language needs extra “legislative protection”, and that this also applies to the education system. The opponents argue that linguistic minorities have the right to receive instruction in their mother tongue, in order to preserve and develop the language which is a central aspect of their identity.

There are some arguments that do not fit well with the theoretical concepts applied in this thesis. For instance, Sadurskis argues that the new education reform contains “extensive multilingualism” and he even advocates for some of the subjects being taught in another language than Latvian. Sadurskis emphasizes that Latvian is a country of the European Union and that “it is only normal if every resident of Latvia is fluent in Latvian and at least two other official EU languages”. Wanting to limit the share of instruction in Russian but increasing instruction in official EU languages, mainly English, may be an

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expression of a political will to consolidate Latvia as a European country, clearly distancing it from Russia.

On the same topic, something that I find interesting is Sadurskis’s statement about the order of priority for languages taught in the Latvian education system. Russian is a language that ranks lowest in “use and priority”, since it is not Latvian and not an EU language. Ranking EU languages above Russian may be a result of EU language policy. For example, Article 165(2) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) states that “Union action shall be aimed at developing the European dimension in education, particularly through the teaching and dissemination of the languages of the Member States” (my emphasis). Since Latvia is a member of the EU it is of course natural that the national language policy is affected by policies at the European level. Nonetheless, ranking the language which is the native language of approximately 35 percent of the population lower than for example French seems a bit counterproductive if one strives for a language policy aiming to include all linguistic groups in the imagined community.

With this in mind, one can also wonder if it is really an ideologically monolingualist conviction that is the foundation of the pro-reform side’s opinion that Latvian should be the dominant language of instruction in all schools? Or is it rather that the Latvian language is deemed to be worthy of protection, and that Latvian should be one of the “bases” of Latvian national identity? These two alternatives are of course overlapping: the opinion/conviction that Latvian should “dominate” in Latvia is an expression of monolingualism. However, there is still a difference in the level of abstraction, regarding the motivation for only having one language of instruction in high schools, between 1) Believing that national unity requires “the unity of speech” and 2) Wanting to ensure the survival, and dominance in Latvian society, of the Latvian language. Likewise, do the opponents of the reform believe that the unity of the country is strengthened by multilingualism? Or do they rather seek to promote the status and role of Russian in Latvia? Is it an ideological conviction or linguistic self-interest that motivates them? This thesis does not seek to explain the causes behind the opinions of the proponents and the opponents. Nevertheless, it is an interesting question to raise, something that future research could do well to examine closer.

In the normative argumentation the ambition was to strive for providing an approach that creates an imagined community where both Russian- and Latvian-speaking people are included. Another aim was to offer a compromising solution with regards to the positions of the parties on the 2018 reform. In creating an inclusive imagined community, language has a unifying role. The language of the dominant ethnie, Latvians, can and should, even though it is not “neutral”, provide a unifying basis for all of Latvia’s residents. At the same time, Russian should be acknowledged as a part of Latvia’s linguistic composition. Latvian is a small language that needs extra protection vis-à-vis the much larger Russian language. Therefore, Latvian ought to retain its position as the sole official language. This conclusion is also motivated by the fact that the issue of making Russian the second official language is deeply divisive, thereby risking doing more harm than good with regards to the national unity.

With regards to education, Latvian should be the main language of instruction, in order to ensure the long-term survival of the language. Russian-speakers should be able to study their native language in order to maintain a vital part of their ethnic identity. Furthermore, all students should study Russian at an elementary level. The last proposal is motivated by the fact that even though Latvian ought to be the dominant and unifying language of the country, creating an inclusive imagined community for a (largely) bilingual population is facilitated if the dominant ethnie, to some degree, accommodates the minority language (see 3.6).

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Since all parties of the Saeima are not included in the analysis, it is important to discuss whether the arguments in this thesis present a view on the reform that is not entirely representative for the Saeima parties. The parties (LRA) and (ZZS) both supported the reform, therefore, the arguments of these parties do probably not deviate too far from the other proponents.271 In conclusion then, since both parties that have opposed the reform and three major parties that defend it are included in the thesis, the results of the analysis are probably at least fairly representative. That the arguments of a fringe party such as the (LKS) constitutes, at least in terms of the amount of text, the major part of the arguments of the opponent side is in part due to the fact that this party is the only one it was possible to conduct an (in-person) interview with. Hence, the (LKS) is the party, whose arguments, the author gained the largest amount of data on. The other reason that (LKS) was given such a central role is, as stated, that it has been the most fervent opponent of the reform.

As mentioned in the first chapter, the ruling coalition has principally agreed to a full transition to instruction in Latvian at all levels of education. After I decided on the subject and aim of the thesis, the Saeima is discussing a bill that would make it mandatory for to provide education programmes (only) in Latvian. It is interesting to follow the development on this issue since it provides new empirical material, but first and foremost, the arguments in favour of a full transition to Latvian at all education levels would likely be more strictly monolingualist in their nature than the arguments defending the 2018 reform. How the arguments have changed, in relation to theory, can be interesting to explore.

Additionally, language reforms in the education sector that have been done in order to strengthen the titular language vis-à-vis Russian has also taken place in, for example, Ukraine. To apply theory regarding the relation between nationalism and language on this could be an interesting research subject.

271 Saeima (2018-02-12) 56

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LSM (2018-03-23): “Saeima okays major language reform” https://eng.lsm.lv/article/politics/saeima/saeima-okays-major-language-reform.a272403/ Retrieved 2019-12-03

LSM (2019-04-23): “Court rules transition to Latvian-only education constitutional” https://eng.lsm.lv/article/society/society/court-rules-transition-to-latvian-only-education- constitutional.a316783/ Retrieved 2020-05-09

LSM (2019-09-24): “Government ready to back full Latvian language use in education” https://eng.lsm.lv/article/society/education/government-ready-to-back-full-latvian-language-use-in- education.a332973/ Retrieved 2020-05-09

Media Bias/Fact Check: “Xinhua News Agency” https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/xinhua-news-agency/

Retrieved 2020-05-16

Ministry of Education and Science: “Discover the important facts regarding the transition to studying in the state language.”

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https://izm.gov.lv/en/highlights/2762-information-regarding-the-transition-to-instruction-in-the-state- language-in-general-education-institutions-offering-education-programmes-for-minorities Retrieved 2020-03-30

Ministry of Education and Science: “Image” https://izm.gov.lv/images/infografikas/aim_infografiki_5.pdf

Retrieved 2020-04-02

Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2018-06-18): “Latest reforms” https://www.mfa.gov.lv/en/policy/society-integration/minority-education-in-latvia/latest-reforms Retrieved 2020-05-09

Nacionala apvieniba (2018-03-22) ”Raivis Dzintars par valodas reformu: labāk vēlu nekā nekad” https://www.nacionalaapvieniba.lv/aktualitate/raivis-dzintars-par-valodas-reformu-labak-velu-neka- nekad/

National Public Radio (2018-10-28): “A New Law In Latvia Aims To Preserve National Language By Limiting Russian In Schools”. https://www.npr.org/2018/10/28/654142363/a-new-law-in-latvia-aims-to-preserve-national-language- by-limiting-russian-in-sc?t=1587990557435 Retrieved 2020-05-16

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (2018-01-26): “Mandates of the Special Rapporteur on the ; the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression; and the Special Rapporteur on minority issues.” Reference: OL LVA 1/2018 https://spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMResultsBase/DownLoadPublicCommunicationFile?gId=23588 Retrieved 2019-12-05

Oldberg (2010): “Russia´s Great Power Strategy under Putin and Medvedev” https://www.ui.se/globalassets/ui.se-eng/publications/ui-publications/-great-power-strategy- under-putin-and-medvedev-min.pdf Retrieved 2020-05-24

Reuters (2012-02-17): “Russian language vote shows ethnic split in Latvia” https://www.reuters.com/article/us-latvia-russia-vote/russian-language-vote-shows-ethnic-split-in- latvia-idUSTRE81G0AS20120217 Retrieved 2020-05-24

Russia Beyond (2018-05-10): “How many people around the world speak Russian?” 62

https://www.rbth.com/lifestyle/328250-how-many-people-speak-russian Retrieved 2020-05-24

Tass.com (2018-09-15): “About 5,000 rally in Riga against reform of Russian-language schools in Latvia” https://tass.com/society/1021758 Retrieved 2019-12-03

Teodor (2015-03-31): ” Etno-Linguistic Conflicts in the Post-Soviet and Eastern Europe Space” https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2619237 Retrieved 2020-05-24

The Guardian (2012-02-19): “Latvians reject Russian as official language” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/19/latvians-reject-russian-official-language

Xinhua News (2018-03-23): “Latvian parliament gives green light to language reform in ethnic minority schools” http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-03/23/c_137058184.htm Retrieved 2020-05-16

Xinhua News (2019-04-24) “Latvian court finds switch to official language in minority schools in line with constitution” http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-04/24/c_138002707.htm

Retrieved 2020-05-16

World Population Review (2020): “Russian Speaking Countries 2020” https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/russian-speaking-countries/

Retrieved 2020-05-24

Figures Wikipedia: “Statistical Regions of Latvia”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_regions_of_Latvia#/media/File:Statistiskie_regioni-A5.jpg

(Picture comes from csb.lv, but I cannot find it there)

Retrieved 2020-04-02

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Interview and email correspondence Muizniece, A. Email correspondence. 2020-04-03

Mitrofanov, M. Interview. 2020-03-11

Sadurskis, K. Email correspondence. 2020-05-10

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Appendix 1 – Interview guides

Questions to Mitrofanov

1. As introduction, tell me a little bit about yourself, about your role in the LKS.

2. What is the purpose with the “Sadurskis reform”, according to you?

3. What are the reasons for LKS’s opposition to this reform?

4. How important is it for people with Russian as their native language to be proficient in Latvian? Follow-up: Why do you think so? 5. How important is it for people with Latvian as their native language to be proficient in Russian? Follow-up: Why do you think so?

6. How should the education system be structured, with regards to languages of instruction, according to the LKS?

7. How will your proposal balance values like national belonging/unity, human rights etc.?

8. What do you think about monolingualism and multilingualism? Should Latvia be a multilingual society? Should there be official multilingualism in Latvia? If so, which languages should be official?

9. If your parties’ policies could be state policy how would that look like on a more concrete level. For example, what would the content be in school books; how would social studies books look like? Would there be bilingual signs in public?

10. Can you name any advantages with the reform?

11. How does the reform affect the sense of national unity?

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Questions for Sadurskis

1. As introduction, tell me a little bit about yourself. 2. What are the purposes of the education reform of 2018, according to you? 3. Why is it right to have Latvian as the sole language of instruction in the high schools? 4. As far as I understand, this reform still gives some room for instruction in a minority language. Tell me more about that. Also, can private schools (without state funding) teach in a language of their choosing, or does the reform apply also to this kind of schools? 5. How important is it for people with Russian as their native language to be proficient in Latvian? Follow-up: Why do you think so? 6. How important is it for people with Latvian as their native language to be proficient in Russian? Follow-up: Why do you think so? 7. Latvia has signed and ratified the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, but not the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. What is the reasons for this? (For example, Russia has signed it but not ratified) 8. An argument against this reform is that it doesn’t respect human rights well enough. How would you respond to this? 9. A criticism I’ve heard voiced is that the reform takes away the ability to learn in Russian, but still has segregated schooling system… as if the state doesn’t want Russian-speaking students in Latvian schools? 10. How does the reform affect the sense of national unity? 11. Is it possible to “become Latvian”? 12. What role, if any, does the historical wrongdoings of the Soviet Union have in affecting the language policy regarding the school system? 13. What do you think is the aspect of your stance that is the most difficult for the people on the other side of this issue to agree with or accept? 14. If you would have to reach a compromise with the opposing side, what would it look like? 15. What is the role/value of the Latvian language in Latvia (regarding national unity and identity)? 16. I heard about that there's also an ongoing reform of the education system, which is not about language of instruction, but rather the content and pedagogical style of education? Can you tell me more about this? 17. Can one, with a non-Latvian ethnic/cultural background, "become" Latvian? If yes, how? If no, why not?

I also gave Mr. Mitrofanov the oppurtunity to ask (critical) questions to Mr. Šadurskis: 18. According to Mr. Mitrofanov, Mr. Šadurskis told an Ukrainian journalist (in an interview in October 2018) that he saw the language policy applied in Alsace in the post-World War Two period as an good example for Latvia to follow (maybe with the exception of the instant transition to French as a language of instruction). My question to Mr. Šadurskis is therefore: How do you view the language policy applied in Alsace? 19. Mitrofanov also wonders: Why does he (Šadurskis), who himself is fluent in Russian, think that Latvians should be deprived of Russian, which provides a rich world of information?

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Questions to Muizniece

1. As introduction, tell me a little bit about yourself. 2. What are your party’s view on this reform? And why does the party think like that? 3. What are the purposes of the reform regarding language of instruction, according to you/your party? 4. As far as I understand, this reform still gives some room for instruction in a minority language at the high school level. Please, tell me more about this. Also, can private schools (without state funding) teach in a language of their choosing, or does the reform apply also to this kind of schools? 5. How important do you think it is currently, and how important do you think it should be, for people with Russian as their native language to be proficient in Latvian? Follow-up: Why do you think so? 6. How important do you think it is currently, and how important do you think it should be, for people with Latvian as their native language to be proficient in Russian? Follow-up: Why do you think so? 7. What is the role/value of the Latvian language in Latvia, regarding national unity and identity? 8. What is the role/value of minority languages in Latvia, regarding national unity and identity? 9. An argument against this reform is that it doesn’t respect human rights well enough. What would you respond to this? 10. A criticism I’ve heard voiced is that the reform takes away the ability to learn in Russian, but still has segregated schooling system… as if the state does not want Russian-speaking students to be in Latvian schools. Is this true, why/why not? 11. If JKP would have to reach a compromise with the parties who disagree with you on this issue, what would that compromise look like? Is there anything your party can not compromise on? 12. How does the reform affect the sense of national unity? 13. Can one, with a non-Latvian ethnic/cultural background, "become" Latvian? If yes, how? If no, why not?

I also have two additional questions about the educational reform(s) itself:

1. On the webpage of the Ministry of Education and Science, it says: “A transition will begin from the five existing minority education models to three new models at the basic education stage.” How do these five old, and three new, models look like? 2. I have heard that along with the language reform in the school system, there is also a reform that affects the content/substance of the education. Can you tell me a bit about this? What are the major changes? (I have not managed to find much information about this in English)

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Appendix 2 – List of material used in the descriptive analysis

Delfi (2020-01-15): ”'Saskaņa' izstrādājusi rīcības plānu 'mazākumtautību izglītības deficīta mazināšanai” ('Harmony' has developed an action plan 'to reduce the education deficit of national minorities')

Diena (2018-02-08): ”Šadurskis: Putinam un Kremlim ļoti nepatīk Latvijas izglītības reforma”

("Shadursky: Putin and the Kremlin do not like Latvia's education reform")

Європейська правда (Yevropes’ka Pravda) (2018-10-02): “Министр образования Латвии: Школьная реформа не оставит почвы для "русского мира" (English Translation: Minister of Education of Latvia: School reform will not leave any ground for the "Russian world")

LSM (2018-01-23): “Government okays transition to Latvian as sole language at schools in 2019”

LSM (2018-03-23): “Saeima okays major language reform”

Latvijas Avīze (2018-09-11): “Jautājam partijām: Kā veiksmīgi pāriet uz vienotu izglītības sistēmu valsts valodā?” ("We ask the parties: How to successfully move to a unified education system in the state language?")

Latvijas Avīze (2019-12-15): “Latviešu valodas deficīts krievu skolās. Kāpēc joprojām?”

(Latvian language deficit in Russian schools. Why still?)

Latvijas Avīze (2020-02-13): “Cīņa par valsts valodu saasinās: kurš iebilst pret latviešu grupu atvēršanu visos bērnudārzos?” ("The struggle for the state language is intensifying: who opposes the opening of Latvian groups in all kindergartens?")

Latvia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2018-06-18): “Latest reforms”

LV Portals (2018-08-29): ”Lasām partiju programmas. Tēma – izglītība un zinātne”

(We read party programs. Theme - education and science)

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Ministry of Education and Science: “Discover the important facts regarding the transition to studying in the state language.”

Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2018-06-18): “Latest reforms”

Nacionala apvieniba (2018-03-22) ”Raivis Dzintars par valodas reformu: labāk vēlu nekā nekad” ("Raivis Dzintars on language reform: better late than never")

National Public Radio (2018-10-28): “A New Law In Latvia Aims To Preserve National Language By Limiting Russian In Schools”.

Neatkarīgā Rīta Avīze (2018-09-30): “VĒLĒŠANAS 2018: Izglītības nozarē topošajiem politiķiem trūkst jaunu ideju” ("ELECTION 2018: Future politicians in the education sector lack new ideas")

Neatkarīgā Rīta Avīze (2019-09-25): "Saskaņa" pilnīgu pāreju uz mācībām latviešu valodā uzskata par provokatīvu” (Harmony, "a complete transition to studies in Latvian is considered provocative”)

Saeima (2018-02-12): ”Frakciju viedokļi 2018.gada 8.februārī” (Opinions of the factions on February 8, 2018)

Saeima (2018-03-22): “Saeima supports transition to Latvian as the only language of instruction in schools” (“Saeima supports transition to Latvian as the only language of instruction in schools”)

Skaties (2018-02-22): “Izglītības reforma turpinās – Saeima konceptuāli atbalsta pāreju uz mācībām tikai latviešu valodā” (The education reform continues - the Saeima conceptually supports the transition to studies only in Latvian)

Xinhua News (2018-03-23): “Latvian parliament gives green light to language reform in ethnic minority schools”

Xinhua News (2019-04-24): “Latvian court finds switch to official language in minority schools in line with constitution”

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Interviews and mail correspondence

Muizniece, A. Email correspondence. 2020-04-03

Mitrofanov, M. Interview. 2020-03-11

Sadurskis, K. Email correspondence. 2020-05-10

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