Man in the middle

One of the country's most authoritative voices on human rights, Nils Muizinieks has for the past decade been immersed in the long and often painful struggle of creating an integrated, civil society in Latvia. Interview by Steven C. Johnson.

Born in California to Latvian parents and a graduate of Princeton University and the University of California-Berkeley, Muiznieks wrote his doctoral thesis in the late 1980s on the Baltic independence movements.

Since becoming director of the Riga-based Center for Ethnic Studies and Human Rights, he has been at the forefront of the debate on integration of Latvia's large Russian-speaking minority.

Is integration working? How would you rate the situation on the ground in Latvia?

I like to look at Latvia in a broader European context, and in that sense, we look pretty good in a number of realms. We look bad in other realms. Where we look good: We have no significant right wing extremist parties to speak of. They exist but have no representation in Parliament. We have no significant extremist groups in society. They are there, but they're small. We may be the only Eastern European country without a signal incident of racially motivated violence.

But it's a really mixed picture. Citizenship, for instance, is a complete success and an utter failure. It's a success in that now, after a huge struggle, the law is in line with European standards, those who want to naturalize can do so. But we still have more than 500,000 non-citizens and there's no sign that this very inert, passive population is going to do anything to change that. Only slightly over 50,000 people have acquired citizenship through naturalization. So in the broader scheme of things, it's not a success.

If we talk about language policy, there's been enormous change in 10 years. The number of those who speak no Latvian has declined from about a million to about half a million. That reflects an increase in language knowledge among Russian speakers. That's a huge leap in 10 years.

If more people can speak Latvian, why aren't more people naturalizing?

The basic issue is that non-citizens have become accustomed to their status and don't care. Their status is not so dire that it motivates them to change it. They have travel documents, their social and economic opportunities are restricted in a minimal way, so it doesn't affect their daily lives. They tend to look upon non-citizens' passports as equivalent to citizens' passport.

How good a job, then, has the government done at promoting naturalization? How do they convince those who don't want to naturalize to do it?

Well, the problem is you can't talk about the Latvian government as a unified actor. You've had coalition governments in which you've had a very wide spectrum of opinion on citizenship issues represented.

For instance, any government in which Fatherland and Freedom is a member won't be sending a clear message on this. There's always going to be someone in that party talking about "decolonization."

Do Latvians in general want to see more integration? Do they want a society where the distinction between Latvians and Russians is blurred?

Latvian society is much more tolerant than the political discourse would make one believe. All the surveys suggest you don't have the kind of polarization you see in the political rhetoric. You have a lot of mixed marriages, inter-ethnic friendships at work, flexibility in the way people switch languages, and you have widespread knowledge of Russian among Latvians. On a day-to-day basis, Latvians' daily behavior reflects integration, or at least a very peaceful co-existence.

The way I understand integration is simple, including two basic principles and one subsidiary principle. The two basic principles are: participation and cooperation, and the subsidiary one is the Latvian language. Latvian is key because it's nearly impossible to fully participate in cultural, political and economic life without it.

Will Latvians in the long-run continue speaking Russian?

There will be huge differences by region. I think that in Latgale and Riga, Russian knowledge will remain the norm for a long time to come. In some country areas where it used to be that every male who had gone through the Soviet army learned Russian, things will change. Knowledge outside the major cities will be much less and will be specific to sector. Those in certain types of businesses will retain a strong knowledge of Russian.

What do you think about the right to Russian secondary education. Should people feel entitled to it?

From a human rights perspective, it's a difficult issue to get your teeth into. European practice is diverse. Some countries do a lot of state-funded minority language education and others, increasingly, are saying that minorities must get education in the national language.

From my own point of view, I think the political reality is such that the shift to full Latvian instruction will probably not take place in 2004 for political and practical reasons. It would create social tension and Russian-speakers would mobilize and Latvia wouldn't want that to happen ahead of EU and NATO membership. Practically, it's widely recognized among experts that the schools are not ready.

There are still those who say Latvia must award citizenship to everyone who was born here or make Russian an official language.

I think it's very destructive on the part of the Russian-speaking elite to hold out the false promise of citizenship on demand and two state languages. It creates illusions that hold people back from naturalizing and gives them the hope they won't need to learn Latvian.

What kind of reaction do you get from other émigré Latvians – a fairly conservative group – about your activities? You must ruffle some feathers when it comes to topics as sensitive as Latvian language policy and naturalization.

Yeah, some of them don't like me. But my contact with the émigré community is pretty limited. I see what's said about me on the Internet discussion groups and in the émigré papers. But most émigrés are pretty divorced from the day-to-day life of Latvia. They don't really know what's going on. If American-Latvians criticize me, I don't take it too seriously because it's usually not based on what's really going on here.

I've been pretty nastily attacked in the Latvian press by media and politicians, too, but it's a tough game. If I wasn't ready for it, I wouldn't be in this field.

For more information on the Center for Human Rights and Ethnic Studies, check out www.policy.lv