What, then, is one to do – sit here for the sake of patriotism… saying, I am a Latvian, I will celebrate Midsummer here, go to the local council for benefits and… just sit? Or – get on a train, go to work, gain experience, pay off loans… Which is better?

Tālavs Jundzis, Neatkarīgā Rīta Avīze, 15 December 2017

Monty Python's Flying Circus once had a politically incorrect sketch in which aliens turned people into Scots. The latter, dressed in kilts and tam-o'-shanters, immediately headed for Scotland, so Scotland was soon flooded with Scots. By reversing the signs, we get a tragically ironic view of contemporary Latvian realities, which are also described here by academic Jundzis. The time when the concept of Latvians as the foundation of the Latvian state (see the preamble to the Constitution adopted in 2014, and amendments to the Citizenship Law and the Criminal Law) is beginning to dominate politics more and more strongly is the very same time that Latvians are leaving Latvia in droves. On the day that you, dear reader, are reading this issue of Rīgas Laiks, 40 people are leaving Latvia. The majority of them are Latvians (although non-Latvians leave in higher proportions), and the majority of them will never return to Latvia to live permanently (although the number of returnees has recently shown a tendency to increase). Therefore, let us not divert our attention from the main point: the Latvian nation-state is gradually abandoning the Latvian state.

To see more or less realistic solutions to this situation, one must first abandon thinking in melodramatic slogans. We will have plenty of this commodity in this pre-election year anyway. One such slogan is "Latvians of many nationalities" and envisions integrating other nationalities of Latvia's inhabitants into Latvians. It may well be that something like this would be normatively desirable. However, a Latvian will always remain, for themselves, specifically an "ethnic" Latvian, i.e., one based on ancestry, who does not actually want any non-Latvian to integrate into the Latvians. It would, of course, be desirable for Russians, Ukrainians, and Arabs to integrate into a politically defined Latvian nation and show at least minimal respect for the Latvian language and culture, but no one seriously expects Jeļena Ostapenko to jump over a bonfire in a Bārta folk costume. Perhaps historical memory plays a role here. Latvians, like other small European nations, have historically been too worried about their own assimilation into Germans or Russians to seriously attempt to assimilate anyone else. Even the ostensibly very nationalistic Ulmanis merely Latvianised the surnames of existing Latvians, but did not expect Jews or Germans to convert to Latvian-ness. Furthermore, the currently planned school reform is more of an attempt to squeeze the Russian language out of the public sector than an attempt to Latvianise young Russians. Therefore, let us not deny: from the perspective of "genuine Latvian-ness", the Saeima's decision not to allow citizens of other nationalities to register as Latvians in their passports was only correct and consistent. If Russians were to really want to convert to Latvian-ness en masse, it would be an unpleasant surprise for many guardians of Latvian-ness.

The second slogan is related to promoting the birth rate as a solution to the decline in the number of Latvians in Latvia. Of course, support for having children is a legitimate state function. After all, to maintain for "all eternity" a Latvian culture that is truly worthy of the name, one needs, at a minimum, a certain number of Latvian-speaking people. And such people will most likely be born in Latvia, and not anywhere else. At the same time, it must be taken into account that any state has only a limited amount of resources, which can be spent on one need or another, but not on all needs at once. If we politically promote the having of children, in the current circumstances, we must reckon with the fact that very many of these children will go away to live and work elsewhere. Is it really the most important task of the Latvian state – to produce labour for other, more developed countries? Or perhaps these same funds could be used to advance Latvian interests in a smarter and more reasonable way?

It is clear that such questions alone will seem blasphemous to some. But true defenders of Latvian interests should not lie to themselves. For example, it is no secret that one of the causes of youth emigration is the state of Latvia's higher education system, which is why a significant portion of the young Latvian elite is already living abroad – and will most likely stay there. These are our Endzelīns, Pauls Stradiņšes, Purvītis-es, and Vītols-es, whom Latvians could potentially be proud of as the elite of their country. But now they will most likely stay in their Stanfords, Heidelbergs, Yales, and Oxfords forever, just because the Latvian state systematically and consistently mocks the academic and scientific sphere. Yet, it has somehow not been heard that our guardians of Latvian-ness are even slightly interested in this – ensuring that those who are already born as Latvians can feel as if they are in the first, not the third, world within their own Latvia. If any of these defenders of Latvian interests had even a little bit of such understanding, problems with minorities would also be much easier to solve. Then all these "loyal" and "disloyal" people would see that the Latvians in power are truly capable of taking responsibility for their country – rather than just bluffing and stoking hatred in order to push through crude, petty schemes under that guise.
Article first published in the February 2018 issue of the magazine "Rīgas Laiks"