Latvians reject Russian as national language
RIGA: Latvian voters resoundingly rejected a proposal to give official status to Russian, the mother tongue of their former Soviet occupiers, though the referendum defeated is expected to leave scars on an already divided society.
Russian is the first language for about one-third of the Baltic country’s 2.1 million people, and many of them would like to accord official status to the language to reverse what they claim has been 20 years of discrimination.
But for ethnic Latvians, the referendum was a brazen attempt to encroach on Latvia’s independence, which was restored two decades ago after a half-century of occupation by the Soviet Union following World War II.
Many Latvians still considered Russian – the lingua franca of the Soviet Union – as the language of the former occupiers.
They also harboured deep mistrust toward Russia and worried that Moscow attempts to wield influence in Latvia through the ethnic Russian minority.