Cultural Differentiation of the Russian Minority

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeKeywords: self-identificationvaluesEstoniathe Russian minority Acknowledgements The preparation of this article was supported by grants from the Estonian Ministry of Education and Science (0181774s01 and 0180017s07) and from the Estonian Science Foundation (5845 and 6968). Notes Notes 1 Our analysis covers not only people with Russian ethnic or linguistic origin but also Ukrainians, Belorussians and other ethnicities. In Estonia there are about 406,700 people (30% of the population) whose mother tongue is Russian, among them about 351,200 are ethnic Russians (ESA 2001 ESA. 2001. 2000 Population and Housing Census: Citizenship, Nationality, Mother Tongue and Command of Foreign Languages, Tallinn: Statistical Office of Estonia. available at: http://www.stat.ee/files/eva2003/RV200102.pdf, accessed 18 April 2008 [Google Scholar]). In our study, ethnic groups were determined on the basis of language rather than ethnicity, because the number of non-ethnic Russians in the sample was too small for a separate analysis. According to the results of previous empirical studies, however, it was not practicable to leave them out of the analysis. Immigrants to Estonia had experienced the Soviet civic assimilation several generations ago and, therefore, about one half of the Ukrainians and Belorussians in Estonia consider the Russian language their mother tongue. A significant part of the legislation of the Republic of Estonia is exclusionary in terms of language, not ethnicity, which brings into focus linguistic distinctiveness as a possible basis for collective identity. Indeed, integration monitoring and other studies have shown that, in Estonia, language is an important factor for interpreting minority–majority relationships and collective self-designations. Thus, in the context of this study it was optimal to use a sample representing the whole community of Russian-speakers in Estonia. We refer to the group as ‘Russians’ for the sake of brevity. 2 Relatively similar, language-centered views on inter-ethnic integration also predominated in Latvia. Ethnic problems became more significant in 2003 and 2004, when mass protests developed against education reform, according to which at least 60% of classes had to be taught in Latvian in grades 10–12 in public schools. 3 By 2008, economic growth in Estonia had slowed and, according to the evaluation of the World Bank, the reforms to improve the economic environment had stopped (Postimees 2008 18 September 2008. “Postimees”. In ‘Maailmapank: Eestis on reformid lõppenud’ [‘The World Bank: Reforms Have Stopped in Estonia’] 18 September, available at: http://www.postimees.ee/?id=34321, accessed 29 September 2008 [Google Scholar]).