The language issue in the small Baltic states that were formerly under Soviet occupation: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania is still very alive and represents a fault line in the constitutions of these countries.
A significant portion of the population are native Russian speakers and some areas speak Russian exclusively. However there is a public policy of favouring the native language and using it as a qualification for citizenship. I have met Estonian speaking Estonians who see the Russian speaking Estonians as an existential threat. I have also met Russian speaking Estonians who were rendered stateless because they did not speak Estonian, despite the fact that they may have been in the country for several generations. It is similar in Latvia and Lithuania.
To understand this division, you have to look at the history, WW2 and the Soviet occupation. These countries suffered desperately under Stalin with mass deportations and transfers of Russian speakers into these countries. Consequently they keep a wary eye on the Russian Bear. It is not difficult for Putin to arrange demonstrations by Russian minority organisations on the streets of the countries, should he wish it.
Using language to assert national sovereignty is all very well if the native language is useful in an international context. Russian is very useful indeed, a lingua franca because of the Soviet legacy. Estonian and the other Baltic languages are only spoken by a people within those countries and it is pretty difficult to learn.
Further south in Ukraine, Russian is widely understood and the language and culture is similar to Russian and the south and east of the country have a majority of Russian speakers. The conflict with Russian backed rebels in Crimea and East is a clear threat to the Ukrainian state. The status of Russian as an official language of the state is hotly debated as is the protection of the Ukrainian language.
Language can become a political hot potato in the Tower of Babel that is Europe when it is invested with national and political identity.
I was going to say that my only contact with a non-Russian, former Soviet bloc person that I know personally is a former co-worker maybe five years older than me originally from the Ukraine (he got his BS at a university in Kiev.) He learned and could speak Russian but Ukranian is his native language.
It wasn’t until I was trying to guess how much older he is than me that I thought of this. One of the older Millennials like me (or whatever the marketers are calling us early 1980s births these days) can or might remember the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, even if it didn’t mean much at the time. It’s been 25+ years since. So there are any number of people born who either don’t remember the Cold War or were born after. If you’re a child or young adult in non-Russian Eastern Europe these days, is it more useful to learn Russian or English as a second language?
My girl friend in Romania in the 1960s said Russian was a required language of study in all schools there, but the students hated it and preferred to study English or French instead. The status would have been similar in other eastern bloc countries, but at least Russian would have been a lot easier to learn in a country that already used a similar Slavic language, which was not the case in Romania and Hungary.
Larvia, Lithuania and Estonia were, throughut, very resistant to Russian, and few people in those countries could speak Russian any better than they had to. Now, it would be hard to find a young Lithuanian who is conversant in Russian. But those who were born before about 1975 would still have Russian fluency.
In central Asia, Russian is very widely spoken by virtually everyone today. In Kyrgyzstan, everyone except rural villagers can speak Russian, and many Russians still living in Kyrgyzstan do not speak any Kyrgyz at all. The Kyrgyz language is written in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet.
In the Caucasus (Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan), they are very nationalistic, and Russian is not widely spoken at all anymore,
^^ First-generation American-born Latvian. I can’t speak for the citizens in other Baltic countries, but the English language is extremely important to Latvians and many of them speak it. My cousin has lived there for a year, and he said that he was surprised how many people want to practice their English with him. He’s gotten much less practice with his Latvian than he expected.
Latvians would MUCH rather identify with the West than with Russian/Communist oppression. Somehow, Latvians kept their spirit and culture even through that domination, and want nothing to do with it.
As far as Melania sitting next to Putin, I can’t recall where I heard it, but it was mentioned that they could communicate ok with each other because they both speak German. In hindsight, what difference that makes I have no idea because as has been mentioned here, Putin speaks English.
IMHO the conversation between the two might have started out in simple English, but I’d say Melania (out of respect) shifted over to German, a language Putin is more comfortable in.
(Note: I am referring to Latvia in the following paragraph, but I assume the considerations were similar).
Just to clarify - the former citizens of USSR living in Latvia and Estonia were not rendered “stateless” in the typical sense of the term. Rather, they were assigned a special sui generis status of “non-citizen”, granting limited rights with the notable exception of citizens’ exclusive political rights. The Baltic states assert legal continuity with their pre-WWII statehood, and their official position, recognized by just about everyone in the Western world, has always been that independence was merely “restored” when the USSR fell. Thus, citizenship was (rightfully) restored to people who held it before WWII, as well as their descendants. No such decision was made as to other residents who had arrived in more recent times, as they held no such political link with the pre-war independent countries. It was seen as infeasible and even downright dangerous to grant citizenship en masse to hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom didn’t understand local language, were former members of the Red Army/KGB etc. or their political leanings were otherwise suspected to be hostile to the interests of the independent state. Nowadays, they can acquire the citizenship of Latvia in the same process as any other immigrant, and many have done so. Most complaints in this regard are related to the language proficiency test, which many find hard due to the fact that speaking Russian is often sufficient in everyday life, and obviously even more so under the Soviet rule. Some have deliberately kept the special status of non-citizen because is actually advantageous in a few situations - for example, Latvian non-citizens can enter Russia without a visa, a privilege that is not available to citizens.
To my knowledge, their status is unique in international context and not well understood by many outsiders. Hence it is easy for various interested parties to spin the situation for propaganda purposes, such as people being “deprived of citizenship due to being Russians” etc.
Wow. This is exactly the patronizing attitude that the people of the Baltics have had to put up for many decades - hearing over and over again that the great, mighty, international Russian is superior to one’s native language, that nobody but themselves needs these languages or wants to learn them etc. These barely veiled references to eventual linguistic assimilation, for a long period of time backed by Soviet governmental and military might, may well be one of the main reasons that the Baltic people get so defensive about linguistic issues to this day.
Yes, they are. But as I said, it is possible to communicate in “general Slavic” because all Slavic languages share root words. As a speaker of Russian, I can make myself understood to people who speak other Slavic languages. The resulting conversation won’t be terribly eloquent or profound, but simple communication can occur.
Wow, that’s impressive. Two other now extinct languages were spoken in ancient Slovenia also: Venetic, a separate branch of Indo-European, and Rhaetic, a non-Indo-European language related to Etruscan. (Rhaetic was possibly the language spoken by Ötzi Iceman, or perhaps it was something related to ancient Camunic.) So much linguistic oomph for such a small country!