Ethnic Conflicts in the Baltic States in Post-soviet Period. Сборник статей
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конфликта/под ред. Бригиты Зепа. Балтийский институт Социальных наук. Рига. 2005.
Appendix 1. Technical information model of the sample study in 2011 *.
* The table shows only the positive data.
Baltic national minorities as victims of selective weapons of mass destruction
Vladimir Viktorovich Buzaev, Ph.D. in Geology and Mineralogy
Co-chairman of the Latvian Human Rights Committee
For more than 20 years, there have been ongoing heated debates on whether non-citizenship in Latvia and Estonia and the restrictions on the use of the minority languages in all three Baltic States constitute serious violations of human rights or just something that goes with the “restored democracies”. From our point of view, there is nothing to discuss, as the ‘integration’ policy being implemented in those countries literally appears to be lethal for its subjects. The only issue that might become a matter of discussion is the assessment of the relative efficiency of the said two methods of influencing the “unwanted elements”.
Demographic collapse
The addition of the general demographic depression in Europe to the disastrous consequences of the collapse of the USSR has lead the fact that only the former republics of the European part of the USSR and the countries in its spheres of influence (see Table 1) have joined the leaders in the population decline in the last 20 years.
Table 1
Leaders of demographic decline in Europe*
* Data for each country are taken from corresponding articles in Wikipedia. Data for Albania and Armenia are from 1989. Data for Georgia and Moldova have been calculated or the beginning of 1990. For comparison, in World War II USSR lost 14 % of the population.
Comparison of the 1989 and 2011 data shows that the share of the population decline due to the decline in the ethnic minority population is 42 % for Lithuania, 71 % for Estonia and 83 % for Latvia. At the same time, the share of ethnic minorities in the population of these countries in 1989 was 20 %, 38 % and 48 % correspondingly, and 16 %, 32 % and 38 % in 2011.
The main reason of the population decline is emigration: 65.3 % before 2000 and 61.6 % in 2000–2011 in Latvia.[1] Fragmentary data on the ethnic composition of the emigrants (Table 2) indicate that non-ethnic Latvians constitute the overwhelming majority among those leaving the country in the first period and the absolute majority in the second period.[2]
Table 2
Ethnic composition of emigrants from Latvia
However, both birth and death rate values vary significantly between the native population and ethnic minorities (Table 3). At the same time demographic values of ethnic minorities in the Baltic States are substantially worse than those in the countries of their ethnic origin.
Table 3
Birth, date and natural increase rate of main ethnic groups in Latvia and Estonia, as well as main countries of origin of ethnic minorities (per thou)[3]
The example of Latvia has proven[4] that such drastic differences can be explained by neither assimilation, special aspects of settlement of ethnic minorities nor the deformation of the age structures in the ethnic groups due to the existing mass emigration and differences in birth rate.
Mass non-citizenship
The situation with the mass non-citizenship in Latvia and Estonia is given in Table 4.
Non-citizens of Latvia and Estonia constitute 70 % and 22 % correspondingly of all persons without nationality living in the 500-million EU. The fact that those who reached the age of majority by 1991, before that had all political rights in their current states of residence distinguish them from the remaining 8 % of non-citizens in the EU.[5]
In 2012, 1156 people naturalized in Estonia and 2213 in Latvia, which means that it would require 80 and 133 years correspondingly to naturalise the remaining non-citizens. According to the Eurostat data for 2010, Latvia is in 13th and Estonia is in the 20th place in terms of the rate of conferment of nationality. Lithuania is in penultimate place among 33 countries of the EU, EFTA and candidate countries.[6]
Table 4
Comparative data on status of population groups in Estonia and Latvia (2011–2012)[7]
Of 80 differences in the right of citizens and non-citizens of Latvia, on 16 occasions the rights, which cannot be exercised by non-citizens (41 % born locally, for the rest average residence period in Latvia exceeds 45 years), can be exercised by the foreigners who are the EU citizens. For example, they can stand for local elections in Latvia and Estonia whole non-citizens of Latvia, unlike their Estonian fellows, cannot even vote in local elections. The author believes that the continued existence of the mass non-citizenship in the Baltic States is a test of devotion to the ideals of democracy declared in the EU. The test, which this structure has failed ingloriously.
Nonetheless, the share of non-citizens of Estonia in 1992 was 32 % of the population and 83 % of ethnic minorities, and the share of non-citizens of Latvia in 1993 was 29 % and 60 % correspondingly. And while in the last decade of the 20th century the mass non-citizenship significantly influenced the election results, employment of ethnic minorities and their involvement in business, now the role of this adverse factor has substantially weakened compared with the language restrictions. For example, in 2013 in Latvia for the first time the municipal election took place in the circumstances where the elected candidates faced the requirement to have the confirmed knowledge of Latvian to C1 category (5th out of 6 difficulty categories), and a mandate withdrawal procedure was put in place. 79 % of citizens, which is about 300 thousand people, who are non-ethnic Latvians do not satisfy this requirement. At the same time, “only” 260 thousand non-citizens are completely deprived of their right to vote.[8]
Status of languages of ethnic minorities
In the Baltic countries, only two ethnic minority languages have a reproduction mechanism, i.e. school network: Russian and Polish. School network with education in Polish is present in Lithuania (64 schools with 11,300 students in school year 2007/2008) and in Latvia (5 schools with 1147 students in school year 2010/2011, 3 of those are secondary).[9]
In the preparation of the resolution of the 2011 Regional Conference of Russian Compatriots in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, the author collected comparative statistical data supporting a special role of Russian language in the Baltic States (Table 5).
Table 5
Population of Baltic States by ethnic composition and relation to Russian language (million persons)*
* Population and ethnic composition data are taken from the websites if Interior Ministries of the respective countries)as of August 2011); data on the share person whose native language is Russian from the 2000-national population census; language fluency data taken from