Thread: Regarding Russian in the Baltic States

I don't know what I dislike more: Russians claiming that Latvians are Nazis, or Latvians black-painting Russians making false accusations and discriminating against Russian speakers!

And Nulle, you keep forgetting, that as far as the Soviets were concerned, they liberated you guys and did you a favour by incorporating you in the USSR.
It was not like they occupied you and started exploiting the country, like say, the Nazis did. Whether it can really be called an "occupation" is doubtful. I guess the mistake they made was to not hold a referendum about whether Latvians wanted to be part of the USSR, or remain independent. But as we know, referendums is not exactly part of the communist ideology. The Soviets acted fully in line with their ideology, which they believed was a great ideology. They thought they were helping you. I suppose you could call it "a well meaning mistake". The whole idea was that all the Soviet republics were equal, but as far as I understand, the Baltics were considered particularly nice because of the gorgeous coastline and the more "European" feel. They built schools, libraries, hospitals, sports centres etc. You have mentioned people being deported, but as the Russians here have pointed out, this happened to anyone in the USSR that was considered suspect and it was not a particular slight against Latvia. And it affected only a minority. Other Latvians benefited from free education and support in their endeavours like sports or art that they might not have been able to afford as peasants in pre-war Latvia. And don't forget that all other countries accepted the annexation of Latvia as juste and legal at the time. Whether this was morally right or not, I do not know, but from the point of view of the USSR, they were genuinely liberating you and annexed the Baltics in a legal way.

Gosh I am getting rather fed up with this discussion - I think we have covered it from every possible angle now!

As for Finnish: Sweden was fully planning to make Finland Swedish speaking. No Swedish speakers learned Finnish and many Finns changed language to Swedish.
The Finns were not treated that well - in fact, many there apparently thought belonging to Russia was an improvement to belonging to Sweden, because Russia more or less left them alone and did not try to change things, whereas Sweden had meddled quite a bit.

They take a few years of mandatory Swedish in school and this helps them to remain a part of the rest of Scandinavia - otherwise they could not understand the other languages. Some don't like the mandatory Swedish. All of the Finns defend the right of the native Swedish speakers there to speak their own language. It's part of their national identity to have two languages and they like it.

All of the native Swedish speakers learn Finnish before adulthood and even if it is not their preferred language, they can speak it if it is necessary.
The Finns can all understand basic Swedish, some are happy to speak it with strangers, others not.

The fact that Finns speak Swedish has helped their economy massively, helps peoples individual careers and means that there are lots of marriages and friendships between Finns and Swedes. I studied there for 6 months, for example. Lots of Finns study in Sweden.

Not only schools and hospitals were built in Soviet Latvia - factories as well. For example, RAF - Riga Autobus Factory, founded in 1949. Vans made by RAF were used as shuttles, ambulance cars etc. everywhere in the USSR. Unfortunately for Latvia, RAF lost in the competition with the Russian company GAZ (founded in 1932 in Nizhny Novgorod), failed to conquer the new Russian market and went bankrupt in 1998.