LITMIR.BIZ

      This is how the status of Russian language was reflected in the Resolution: “The constitutions of all three countries name the native language of ethnic majority as the state language. The languages of ethnic minorities, among which Russian (in Lithuania, together with Polish) is predominant, are unnaturally called ‘foreign’ in legislative acts of Latvia and Estonia. Russian has been banished from the state administration and court procedures, erased from geographic maps and personal documents, is prohibited from being used in the communication of the people with the authorities even in the areas where ethnic Russians are a majority.

      Following Latvia’s example, the local state languages are unreasonably forced as the languages of education onto the educational systems in Estonia and Lithuania. Russian is not among the mandatory school subjects in the ethnic majority schools, which leads to dramatic fall in the knowledge of the language by the young generation.

      The guarantees of their languages given to the ethnic minorities in the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities that has been ratified by all three Baltic States are not working. Russian, which is one of the most spoken languages in the world, is spoken by 60 % of the Baltic population and is native language for almost one quarter of their population, in terms of the level of legal protection is significantly lower than a dialect of a minor group living in the country where the standards of ethnic minority protection are followed.”

      Limitation of education opportunities in ethnic minority languages

      The system of education in the languages of ethnic minorities in the Baltic States is being eliminated in two ways:

      – by legislative introduction of the majority language into the ethnic minority schools as the language of education;

      – outnumbering (compared with native nation schools) reduction of number of ethnic minority schools.

      Latvia became a ‘pioneer’ of limiting possibilities to receive education in Russian.[10] In 1995 the Education Act was supplemented with the provision requiring that at least two subjects should be taught in Latvian in secondary school and three in upper secondary school.

      Since 2000, four programmes have been introduced in schools and they differ only in the number of hours taught in Latvian. 23 % to 82 % of teaching hours remain for native language in the 1st year and 14.7 % to 26.5 % in the 9th year.

      The projects of complete transfer of the ethnic minority schools to the education in Latvian language had been under consideration since 1996 and caused mass protests. As a result a compromise was reached, which satisfied neither party: since 1 September 2004 no more than 40 % of classroom hours were allowed to be taught in native language.

      Estonia is implementing a secondary school ‘reform’ based on the Latvian example of 2004: transfer of the first grammar school (from year 10 to year 12) to Estonian language started in September 2011 and should be completed (at least 60 % of classroom hours in Estonian) by 2013. The difference is that all Russian school in Estonia can apply for a permit to continue teaching in Russian. Six Narva and eleven Tallinn schools submitted their applications, but the government approved those for only two evening schools. The other schools went to court, but at the time of the latest update of the information, they had already lost in the first instance courts and the appeals had not been considered.[11]

      The Lithuanian government so far has braved only the first stage of the Latvian school reform and introduced three mandatory subjects taught in Lithuanian in the ethnic minority schools; this was done in Latvia back in 1993. It lead to active protests whose initiators and participants were mainly Polish teachers and students.[12]

      Poland’s Ministry of Interior reacted very strongly, including calling in their ambassador ‘for consultations’.[13] And Poland has every right to do so, since there a treaty between Poland and Lithuania guaranteeing free functioning and state support of Lithuanian schools in Poland and vice versa.

      Similar treaty also exists between Poland and Latvia.[14] However, Poland does not respond to the situation with the ethnic minority schools in Latvia, where the situation is by far more serious, demonstrating a double standard policy towards their compatriots which is common in the EU.

      As for a similar intergovernmental treaty of 1994 between Estonia and Russia, in July 2013 the guarantees of the existence of Russian language school education in Estonia were in the process of being cancelled.[15]

      The data on the surpassing reduction of the number of schoolchildren in the educational programmed for ethnic minorities are given in Table 6.

      Table 6

      Population and schoolchildren number trends in the Baltic states in 1990–2011[16] *

      * In columns related to particular years absolute figures are given. The last column contains the ratio of the existing difference in 2011 and 1900 in per cent to 1990. Population figures in the column related to 1990 are given based in the 1989 population census.

      For all schoolchildren studying in the state languages, a positive influence of the Soviet demographic policy was still present at the beginning of XXI century. Nonetheless, the number of schoolchildren in Latvia and Estonia in the entire period has seen greater decline than the number of adults.

      As for the schoolchildren studying in the ethnic minority languages in Latvia and Estonia and in Russian in Lithuania, the decline of the their number up to 2001 corresponded to the rates of forcing the adult representatives of the groups in question out of the country. In the subsequent decade this process accelerated due to significant fall in birth rate among the ethnic minorities compared with representatives of national majority and sending children to majority schools for education.

      Long-term trend of the education in Polish in Lithuania in the first ten years is related to overcoming the consequences of using the Soviet bilingual principle in each republic without any due support languages of the third minorities. In the last decade the closing down process also affected Polish education. The data on Russian education, unlike in Latvia and Estonia in relation to the number of ethnic Russians, indicate its substantial role in the education of the non-Russian children, which has not yet been lost.

      In Latvia, the number of schools providing education in Russian is decreasing four times faster than the number of Latvian schools (Table 7).

      Average occupancy of Latvian schools has dropped from 267 to 209 students, i.e. by 22 %, and the Russian schools from 533 to 458, or by 14 %.

      In four years of the ‘social-democratic’ administration’s rule in Riga, 6 Latvian and 12 Russian schools were closed. At the same time, the average number of students in Latvian schools dropped from 523 to 505 and in Russian increased from 548 to 639.

      The number of schools providing education in Russian (Russian and mixed) across the country fell by 43 % from 2002 to 2011: by 28 % in major cities, by 61 % in five statistical rural regions, including by 80 % in Vidzeme and 85 % in Zemgale regions. For comparison, the decrease of overall number of Latvian schools in the country is 11 % with 0.9 % in major cities and 14 % in regions, including 17 % in Vidzeme and 15 % in Zemgale regions.

      Table 7

      Decrease of number of schools in Latvia

      In these regions in 2010 the number of adult representatives of ethnic minorities per schoolchild was 68 and 48, and in Kurzeme regions a fantastic figure of 988 people. At the same time for Latvians this figure was about 8–9 persons.

      Historical memory in electoral behaviour

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