Baltic states braced for backlashby Russian minorities

From the coast road that leads into the Latvian port of Liepaja from the north, it is an astonishing sight a vast Russian Orthodox cathedral, its gilded onion domes lit up by floodlights, surrounded by a suburb of crumbling Soviet apartment blocks.

This is Karosta, founded by the tsarist regime as a naval base in the 1890s and used by the Soviet military as recently as 20 years ago. A ship canal separates Karosta from central Liepaja, and the swing bridge across it has been padlocked for more than a year since a Georgian tanker ran into it during a storm, obliging residents to make a detour of several kilometres and reinforcing Karosta's isolation from the rest of the city.

Liepaja's official tourist brochure tries to make a virtue of Karosta's "enchanting brutality", waxing lyrical about "the sweet smell of wild roses among the hard, cold steel of twisted barbed wire". In reality, it is a dismal, desperate place, riven by unemployment and drug addiction, its streets dark and deserted on a Saturday night. Karosta is where most of the city's Russian-speaking population live the ancillary workers brought here to service the naval base, now left high and dry by the receding tide of Soviet power.

It is a problem that affects all three Baltic republics to varying extents. For many indigenous Balts, Russian-speakers are an unwelcome leftover of a brutal 50-year occupation, during which their languages and cultures were suppressed and tens of thousands of their compatriots killed or deported to the gulags. The friction with Russia over oil and gas, along with a recent row over the passage of Russian submarines through Estonian waters, has done little to ease the situation.

But among some sections of the Russian-speaking population, an angry backlash is gathering force. Next month, four men are due to go on trial in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, for their part in riots which were sparked last April by government plans to move a Soviet war memorial. The men are all members of a pro-Russian group called Night Watch. Two of them have been released from custody pending trial after their defence lawyers argued that, as holders of the "grey" passports issued to resident aliens, they would be unable to flee the country.

When Estonia became independent in 1991, only those whose families had been living in the country before the Soviet occupation were granted citizenship. Those who moved there during the occupation were required to demonstrate knowledge of Estonia's history and language to qualify. Non-citizens cannot vote, obtain an EU passport or travel abroad, leaving them effectively stateless a situation which has drawn sharp criticism from the United Nations, the Council of Europe and Amnesty International.

Despite the fact that about 30 per cent of the population are Russian speakers and the language can be heard in shops and on the streets, it is all but invisible. There are no Russian signs or advertisements to be seen as the result of the country's draconian Law on Language.

Unemployment is twice as high among Russian speakers as among Estonians, and research by the University of Tartu has found that, for those in work, the pay gap has widened since 1989, to peak at 25 per cent in 2003.

Russian-speakers account for 58 per cent of Estonia's prison population and approximately 80 per cent of HIV-positive cases. They have a higher incidence of respiratory diseases, alcoholism and drug addiction and, according to a paper published in the British Medical Journal in 2004, significantly higher rates of suicide than native Estonians or Russians in Russia.

Amnesty International warns that the Russian-speakers in Estonia are "impeded from the full enjoyment of their economic, social and cultural rights". Last year, it condemned the country's Language Inspectorate, which carries out spot-checks on workers to see if they can speak Estonian if they fail, they face losing their jobs as "repressive and punitive in nature".

A sacked woman taxi driver from Tallinn told Amnesty: "They can sack you not because you are a bad worker, not because passengers have been complaining, but because you don't know Estonian well. I don't have a job and I cannot pay for Estonian language courses. How am I going to live?"

In Latvia, where Russian-speakers make up almost 30 per cent of the population, similar legislation is in force, with the result that half of them have citizenship. The country's entry into the EU was marked by a 20,000-strong march through Riga in protest against a law restricting the use of Russian in education. The head of the Latvian parliament's foreign affairs committee, Aleksandrs Kirsteins, has described the non-citizens as "civilian occupiers" and has called for them to be put on trains back to their "ethnic homeland".

However, there are some encouraging signs. When Latvia's popular anti-corruption chief Aleksejs Loskutovs who speaks Latvian with a Russian accent was sacked, thousands of Latvians took to the streets, forcing the government to reinstate him. This incident contributed to last week's resignation of the Prime Minister, Aigars Kalvitis, and the fall of his ruling coalition. In Lithuania, which has a more relaxed relationship with Russia, the situation is less fraught. Every resident was given Lithuanian citizenship after independence and international observers regard Lithuanian law on minority issues as the most liberal in the Baltics. Many people in the Baltic republics simply hope the tensions will go away in time. Among the Russian-speakers, they say, the young, the ambitious and the adaptable have all learnt the national language and are well on the way to being assimilated.

The problem with this theory is that it in effect consigns the older generation of Russians to the scrapheap and ignores the fact that not all younger Russians wish to relinquish their language and heritage. Of the four Night Watch defendants, two are in their thirties and one is 18, and a more benign face of Russian nationalism can be seen in the Slavic cultural associations flourishing throughout the region. In more progressive political circles in all three states, however, there is a dawning understanding that their sizeable Russian-speaking minorities are here to stay.