It was then that I understood the subtle connection between the "March of Dissenters" anti-Kremlin protests in Russia, and the protests by the Russian minority in the Baltics: both, at a fundamental level, are about dignity, about not being a slave.
I spoke to one of the more moderate Latvian politicians, Oskars Kastens, the government Minister of Integration, about the disenfranchisement of the Russians. He countered their complaints by noting that the 400,000 stateless Russians, or 20% of Latvia's total population, do get pensions, access to education, state grants, and so on. It seemed to him self-evident how decent and reasonble the Latvian government was: they paid the Russians money, after all. Even given his country's experience under occupation, he didn't grasp the Russian minority's grievance.
One of the ugliest arguments against the Russian minority's complaints, which you hear often, is that the Russians in Latvia/Estonia "have it so much better than Russians in Russia...they should be grateful, even if they can't vote, to be in an EU country." It's the same argument that supporters of South Africa's apartheid regime used to give: that South Africa's blacks lived so much better than blacks in African-ruled countries, so therefore, they should be grateful. If they didn't like it in South Africa, let them live with their African brothers in the Congo, or Burkino Faso, or some other fucked up black country. Then they'd see what complaining was really about. This is essentially the argument used to deny the Russian minority's grievance, which is, at heart, a question of dignity. The same issues that underlie the anti-Putin protest movement.
Many in the Russian-speaking community are aware of the similarity between their protest and those of the anti-Putin marchers. Tatyana Zhdanok, who serves in the European Parliament, told me that not only did she feel this affinity, but that moreover, the Kremlin's behavior during the Tallin riots, sending Nashi to the Estonian embassy in Moscow, "has only made our situation worse, and played into the hands of the Latvian and Estonian anti-Russian leaders." Like many other leaders of the Russian minority, she lamented her community's position as "hostages" of both Latvian discrimination and sleazy Kremlin politics.
Incidentally, the Latvian government tried to strip Zhdanok of her elected post, but they were overruled by the European Court of Human Rights. Zhdanok, who lost many family members in the Holocaust, was once labeled an "extreme Russian nationalist" by the U.S. State Department simply for supporting the Russian-speaking minority's rights, yet today she is in an alliance with the Green Party of Europe, the only political party which recognizes the grievances of the Russian-speaking minority as valid.
What really fuels the frustration and injustice is the arrogant way in which the Russian minority's grievances are dismissed. One man I met on my way to the May 9 rally told me that he was born in Latvia, left to study in Moscow, and came back only to find he was considered an "alien" by the government, and had no right to citizenship. He showed me his passport, which is stamped "alien," and began to curse.
"They won't listen to us, and the Europeans pretend as if we don't exist, that we're just a Russian fifth column," he said. "I was born here! This is my homeland. I supported independence. But they decided to fuck all of us. What Estonia showed is that the only way to change things is by physical force. We can't reason with these people with words and arguments, after 15 years, it's clear that words don't work."
Ethnic Russians rioting in Estonia
Originally Posted by Odin
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Cause for concern
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