Thread: Языковая обстановка в Латвии и др.

And I don't know if you have ever heard such name like Kārlis Ulmanis.

Latvians have very mixed opinions about him. Some view his reign as a golden age for Latvia.
But some think that we should not honor him because he destroyed our democracy and gave our country to Staļin without resistance.

why Russians are still staying and living in Latvia if life there for them is so bad and they are so much discriminated there

Some of them are emigrating, but... not to Russia .

I think the reason for all this is in the PAST.

But it is not a distant past like between Finland and Sweden. Nobody hates Sweden now but ~300 years ago they occupied us.
Soviet army left only in 1994.
My grandparents that were deported are still alive.
Most of 30+ year olds remember when everything here was in russian - education, government, etc.
Remember soviet guest workers and military that immigrated here in large numbers (Lithuanians were more lucky).
(can't really blame these people - life in the rest of Soviet Union was a lot worse than in the Baltic states)
Remember KGB officials that were infiltrated everywhere.
Remember that russian was FORCED on everyone.
That's why most of people here do not want to see signs in Russian - reminds them of USSR.
And this was not 200 years ago - only 20.
That's why Russian will not be an official language anytime soon. Maybe after ~20 years.

Originally Posted by nulle

Latvians have very mixed opinions about him. Some view his reign as a golden age for Latvia.
But some think that we should not honor him because he destroyed our democracy and gave our country to Staļin without resistance.

We Lithuanians also have mixed oppinions about our pressident Antanas Smetona because he also left Lithuania one day before Russians illegally occupied Lithuania. Anyway, some historians say that there was actually no other choice for him because if Lithuanians tried to fight back against red army then Russians would have made just a terrible mascare in my country. Back then we wasn;t so strong to fight back against Russia. And when when I think about Latvian president's decision it's really understandable why he behaved so because in 1940 06 15 Russia occupied Lithuania and just when red army was everywhe in Lithuania's teritory, then on 16th of June Russia announced ultimatums both for Latvia and Estonia. This way these countries fell like into some kind of traps which Stalin arranged. And it doesn't matter if Latvia and Estonia would have accepted these ultimatums or not, Russia still would have occupied them because these countries were surrounded by huge russian army. So, overall, these Stalin's ocupation plans worked out just perfectly for Russians and then they reached their aim...

So, overall, these Stalin's occupation plans worked out just perfectly

Authoritarian regimes are partly at fault here.
If Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, and Finland (and maybe some other central European countries too) had united in some kind of Central-North European Union - maybe history would have been different.
But authoritarian leaders at that time were too arrogant to agree on something like that - Ulmanis, for example, was not thinking about foreign relations at all.
Latvia was a "neutral country" at that time - LOL.
At least our politicians have learned of his mistakes - and that's why we are in the EU and NATO now.
The fact that Lithuania and Poland did not have diplomatic relations was a biiig mistake.
Lithuania got Vilnius back, but with that came 50 year long occupation.

Well I am trying to be understanding about why the Baltics are choosing to discriminate against Russian speakers

As I said - the fact that some employers can refuse to speak Latvian proves that Russians are not the ones discriminated here.

And in Lithuania there are no such thing as non-citizens.