ABSTRACT
In both Latvia and Kazakhstan, sociocultural structures do not necessarily follow strict ethnic categories. A whole series of Latvian laws adopted in recent years serve as tools in an ethnocentric kind of nation-building. There is much to indicate that Russian Latvians and Latgalians are increasingly becoming assimilated into the common Latvian ethnic group, especially among the younger generation. The Latvian law on citizenship was not ethnically discriminatory. It was based on the principle of strict legal continuity between the interwar Latvian republic and that of today. Kazakhstan is in many ways very different from Latvia. What makes comparisons interesting, however, is the sociocultural bipolarity that characterizes both countries. Kazakhstan is perhaps even more split along bipolar lines than is Latvia. The main reason the pressure on the Russians of Kazakhstan to learn Kazakh has been so intermittent and mild is that the Kazakh political and financial elite rarely have a good command of the language themselves.
