ABSTRACT
Juˉrmala is a coastal Baltic city about 20 kilometres west of Riga, the capital of Latvia. A group of students at the local G˙imnaˉzija talked with me about what it means to be Latvian. Nellija G ( ) was the youngest, at 14: the other four were in a higher grade and were 15 and 16. Uldis F’s ( ) mother worked as a clinic registrar, Monta A’s ( ) as a lawyer. Reines F’s ( ) parents were both dentists, and Agnese’s ( ) father was a builder. Nellija’s father worked at the local radio station. All spoke Latvian, but Monta and Reines were both partly Russian by descent; they talked about the Russian minority living in Latvia, cut off when Latvia became independent of the former Soviet Union in 1991. In Latvia as a whole, 27 per cent of the population declares itself Russian and 62 per cent Latvian, but in Jurmala the rates are 35 per cent Russian and 51 per cent Latvian (Latvia Central Statistical Bureau, 2011). Agnese summed up the dominant sentiment when she said:
It’s an interesting situation with Russians here in Latvia. Because they live here, and… we don’t want them here… like the language, when you hear Russian most people usually say ‘Oh, again, Russian’… we are not that objective, because sometimes we have feelings [about] the Russians that disturb us.
