Russians Again Foreigners in Latvia

Viktor Dergunov has lived in this graceful old city of church spires and cobblestone streets since 1961, when the Soviet army dispatched his father to this tiny Baltic republic that once formed the forbidding edge of the Iron Curtain.

Over the decades, the Russian family came to see Latvia as their home. Dergunov met and married Yelena, who was born in Riga. So were their children and, last year, a granddaughter. But when Latvia entered the European Union today along with nine other nations, Dergunov and his family did not join other Latvians as new EU citizens.

Their Latvian passports are marked “alien.” They will not be able to travel through the rest of Europe, at least for the next few years, without obtaining a visa. There are limits on the jobs they can hold and the property they can own. They cannot vote, although a Spaniard who establishes residence here is now eligible, as an EU citizen, to vote in municipal elections.

When Dergunov, a 53-year-old anesthesiologist, was asked about Latvia’s decision to join the European Union, he was blunt. “I can say one thing: They didn’t ask us. We didn’t take part.”

The hundreds of thousands of Russians still living in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania 13 years after independence are among the most visible reminders of the stunning transformation of the post-Cold War landscape. In recently joining NATO as well as the EU, republics that once were part of the Soviet Union are for the first time becoming members of an alliance that for years was Russia’s sworn enemy.

In the Baltics, the Iron Curtain’s fault line still looms large. The region carries the footprints of Hitler and Stalin’s armies, of five decades of Soviet rule, of a grass-roots independence movement that helped close the book on Russian dreams of enduring empire. In Latvia, with half as many Russians as ethnic Latvians, there is little chance of agreement on which is the greater cause for regret.

“To the majority of the Russian people, Latvia is something that was ours and got away,” said Karlis Kaukshts, vice rector of the Baltic Russian Institute. “It’s like an unfaithful husband.”

For Latvians, NATO membership represents security for a nation that was subjected to Nazi and Soviet occupation. The tiny nation lost more than half a million people to death, deportation and flight during World War II, including more than 90,000 Latvians, Jews and Gypsies who were killed in Nazi concentration camps.

Thousands more were deported to Siberian gulag camps after the war.

“It seemed peculiarly appropriate after the removal of the Iron Curtain, and the whole of Eastern Europe finally being free of this tyranny, to join a community of nations that had been totally expanding, and at every wave of expansion had gained in strength, gained in effectiveness and had shown visible benefits to every country that had joined,” President Vaira Vike-Freiberga said in an interview.

Moscow has watched the Baltics defecting to the West with ill-concealed anxiety. When NATO F-16s began patrolling Baltic airspace last month, a Russian jet illegally probed the edges of Estonian airspace. Six Russian diplomats have been expelled from the Baltics for alleged espionage since February, and Moscow has reciprocated.

The greatest uproar occurred in March, when Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, the flamboyant Russian nationalist politician, predicted that NATO and Russia would come to apocalyptic blows in the Baltics.

“Hatred of the Russians is pushing the Baltics into the paws of NATO, and this puts them on the brink of death,” Zhirinovsky said. “The conflict between NATO and Russia will be in the territory of the Baltics. We will not be bombing Brussels. We will bomb Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn.”

Leaders in those Baltic capitals issued furious protests.

“This is the head of a party who represents, what, 15% of Russian voters? This is the vice speaker of their Duma. Make your own conclusions,” Vike-Freiberga said. “What do you call it if someone says they’re going to wipe you off the face of the Earth?”

The U.S. ambassador to Latvia, Brian E. Carlson, said there is no talk of NATO bases in the Baltics. Yet he declined to downplay the fears that drove Latvia into NATO’s embrace.

“The face of Russia seen up close is maybe not as benign as it looks from a distance away,” he said. “People who are living here have memories. Russia has marched into these countries before, and the idea that people like Zhirinovsky are looking for an invitation to reoccupy these countries to them is not that farfetched.”

Russia’s ambassador to Latvia, Igor Studennikov, said Russia “presents no threat” to the Baltics. “We are proceeding from the assumption that every country is entitled to join the alliances it wants,” he said. “But we doubt it will enhance security in the region.... Humankind is now faced with new kinds of threats -- terrorism, illegal transborder migration, drug trafficking -- and these alliances do not protect anyone from these threats.”

Many Russians in Latvia, like ethnic Latvians, opposed the Soviet state and demonstrated for independence beside them in the streets of Riga. They felt cheated after Latvia granted automatic citizenship only to those who were citizens before Soviet occupation in 1940 and to their descendants. For naturalization, residents must pass a test on Latvia’s history and language, which many Russians see as an insult.

“We grew up here. Our children grew up here. We buried our relatives here. I’ve paid taxes. Do I really need to pass a test for that?” Dergunov said. “Does the state really need this moment of palpable humiliation to forgive me my origin?”

Conservative politicians have argued that Russians who do not wish to learn Latvia’s language and history don’t belong.

“Most of the Russian people in Latvia are children or grandchildren of the occupiers and colonizers of our homeland who invaded our country in 1940.... After the war was over, their army was supposed to go away, but they stayed,” said legislator Peter Tabunas, a member of the nationalist Fatherland and Freedom faction.

“We made a very big mistake by going the long way of compromises with them,” he added. “If they were really discriminated against, if they really thought their life was so bad here, they’d be going back to Russia. But they’re not.”

With EU membership likely to bring an influx of entrepreneurs lured by Latvia’s low wages and prices, many Latvians see the preservation of their language as a matter of national survival. The population is dwindling at the rate of 1,000 a month -- Latvia has the lowest birthrate in Europe -- and for many it is worrying that Russian is the mother tongue of nearly 40% of the people.

Vike-Freiberga, who spent many years working as a psychologist in Canada before returning to Latvia in 1998, began to understand the problem when she went to a clinic for a vaccination.

“You arrive at the clinic speaking Latvian, in a country where Latvian is the official language, and you find that nobody can answer you,” she recalled. “It can be very distressing. And I think it could be even more distressing for a Latvian to call up the fire station to say there’s a fire, and be told, ‘Chto?’ “-- Russian for “What?”

Lawmakers ignited a firestorm in 1998 when they called for public schools to teach only in Latvian. About 80,000 Russian-speaking children attend school in Latvia, many at state-funded Russian-language schools. Public universities already conduct all instruction in Latvian.

Furious Russian teachers and parents appealed to the EU, arguing that the move was an affront to European human rights standards. Latvian officials compromised, backing regulations that will require secondary schools to conduct at least 60% of their instruction in Latvian beginning in September.

Karina Rodionova, a native of Armenia who met her Latvian husband while attending college in Riga, sent her 14-year-old daughter, Ruzanna, to a Latvian school for the first time last September. But Ruzanna began failing all her classes and said the teachers refused to help.

“Geography was a total humiliation,” the girl said. “The teacher turned to me, looked me in the eye, and she said ... ‘If Russians want their education in Russian, why don’t they go the hell back to Russia?’ All the children turned their heads. They were not laughing, but they were looking at me. I rushed to the bathroom and cried.”

Rodionova scheduled a meeting with her daughter’s Latvian literature teacher, who Rodionova said had repeatedly castigated the girl in front of the class for being “stupid.”

The teacher spoke in Latvian. Rodionova speaks Russian, Armenian and Georgian fluently but has never learned Latvian. “ ‘What’s the matter, don’t you speak Latvian?’ ” Rodionova recalled the teacher asking. “I said no. And she continued speaking in Latvian, even though she is completely able to speak Russian. That’s the moment I began to understand everything.”

Such stories are relatively rare in a country that has been multiethnic through much of its history. The school debate has been more political than personal, and in cities such as Riga, residents seem to slide between the languages with little thought.

“I think it’s abnormal if a person is living here for 13 years and can’t learn one language on an elementary level,” said Janis Olups, a 26-year-old waiter.

“But I think we young people, to continue to live a normal life, we have to forget about the past. We should live in one nation. Because we cannot resolve problems that were created by Stalin and Hitler.”

Times staff writer Sergei L. Loiko contributed to this report.