by James Fleener
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A product of the profit motive: Trilingual menu in Riga. “If you feel to be a cat…” (source: author’s personal collection, picture taken in Riga) |
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A product of policy makers: Protests in Riga to Preserve Russian schools. The Russian sign reads: “[Prime Minister] Straujuma, leave the children alone!” (2014) Source |
Walking around Riga, one finds the public signs in the Latvian language as expected, just as there are Czech signs in Prague, Slovak signs in Bratislava, Magyar in Budapest and so forth…with a fair representation of English in most places where international travelers are likely to be. You will also soon notice in Riga that many of the young men walk with the same stilted, to and fro swagger as Putin, swinging only one arm while keeping the other still. According to 2012 figures, 39.1% of Riga is of the Russian ethnicity. Immediately I wondered if this peculiar gait that I witnessed was strictly Russian and if so, does it have its basis in genetics, military training, or mere hero worship. Up to this point in my trip, I was able to leave each city with a residue of hope for their futures. Now, suddenly in this first visit in a city of Russia’s “near abroad” I felt something decidedly different. On the one hand, it was 2007 and I was in a NATO and EU member state. Soviet military badges and hats were being peddled as kitsch in the booths beneath the overpass on Gogola iela. On the other hand, gas prices and Putin were pirouetting inexorably upward together, forming storm clouds which could resurrect derelict warships, tanks, and bombers and burnish the decay from rusting Kalashnikovs.
Ethnic Russians numbered only 5% less than ethnic Latvians in Riga, yet there are no bilingual public signs. I felt like I was in a place of tension where something had to give way someday, sooner or later. Over the previous days I had already too acutely imagined the history of too much war and for the moment I was happy to console myself that the threat of Russian revanchism and irredentism seemed hollow and distant. Still, what value is there in the Latvian government needlessly disenfranchising such a large population of ethnic Russian residents by imposing a language policy that discounts them?
My time in Riga was up. I had purchased my ticket to continue north and just needed to find a way to pass a little time indoors as the temperatures began dropping quickly. I would have sought refuge in a coffee shop as I often do, but I already had too many espressos for the day. Also, I had forgotten which coffee shop to avoid after causing a blackout when I pushed too hard while trying to plug in my laptop using the wrong adapter. So instead I ducked into the cinema a block away from the station and sat back in my warm and cozy theater seat to watch King Kong in English but with both Latvian and Russian subtitles. It occurred to me at that moment the extent that economic considerations can certainly drive equanimity and egalitarianism in minority language practices. The newsstands, restaurants, and cinemas represented Latvian and Russian languages equally, why not the streets and schools too?
The author of this blog entry is James Fleener, a senior at the University of Illinois in the spring of 2014. James was majoring in political science, planning on continuing his education at the University of Illinois, and returning to Europe for extensive study in the future. He wrote this text in the seminar PS 418: Language and Minorities in Europe.
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