Anti-euro crusader gets stiffed, now what?

And so it has come to naught. That is how Saeima deputy Iveta Grigule’s efforts to stop the euro implementation law ended, at least as far as using the right of 34 Saeima deputies to petition President Andris Bērziņš to refuse to sign the law into force and put it to a referendum. The short of it is, she was stiffed last Monday by the Harmony Center (SC), the party that seemed to have pledged 31 signatures. SC leader Jānis Urbanovičs said it would be “irresponsible” to block a law that had been passed by a majority of the Saeima. Not even renegade National Alliance (N) parliamentarian Jānis Dombrava was ready to put pen to paper to block a law he had voted against in breach of coalition discipline.

Grigule, despite being left high and dry and looking more than somewhat foolish, soldiers on, sending a letter to the president with a handful of signatures (I heard three) anyway and promising to make every effort to get 30 000 voter signatures for a referendum initiative.

As I pointed out earlier, the ZZS parliamentarian’s appeal and that made by many other euro opponents is largely emotional. There is some merit, however, to the emotionally appealing slogan that “the people should decide”. Democracy is a good thing, especially if it looks like a democratic decision made nearly ten years ago (and implicitly) in voting to join the EU may have been hasty on the aspect of joining the eurozone. National electorates should have the right to revise earlier decisions, especially if they see things going in the wrong direction. This is what the British  government under David Cameron is suggesting.

So far fine and good, but if there is going to be a referendum on the euro (unlikely as that  may be), there should be a solid plan for the “no” side. The “yes” side has it all planned out in the contested law, down to every detail. Unless the euro opponents – so far a motley crew of cranks, crackpots and a few sincere and respectable critics, such as the economist/entrepreneur Jānis Ošlejs – come up with a detailed plan for how the lat will be managed after breaking away from its Exchange Rate Mechanism II (ERM II) corridor with the euro, they will be no viable “no” alternative. To leave things as they are means to keep the lat as “virtual” euro, which is one of the pro-euro arguments – why not get the real thing?

What worries me about the eurozone is that its troubles may not be over. The Greeks have not fallen over the side, but they would not be missed, even if there was a knock-on effect on other economies, followed by a rush from northern Europe  to sip ouzo, drink retsina and vacation on the Greek islands for new drachma that cost a pittance in post-Grexit euro. The serious shit, to use a term I am sure many economists use over a beer, will start to happen when Spain and perhaps even France (the Economist, hardly a crackpot rag has mentioned this) start hitting serious turbulence. That is when a lot of countries will need a well-thought out plan B, perhaps regrouping around a D-mark 2.0, probably called the Nordeuro or something like that.

Unlike the Scandinavian countries that stayed out of the Eurozone, Latvia does not have a strong economy and  a prosperous society, therefore the lat will have to be linked to some other currency or currencies, in, at best, some kind of managed float. Those responsible for the “independent” monetary policy that euro opponents say they are defending will have to design and manage it. So far, it doesn’t look like anyone in Latvia has done so.

P.S. Sorry for writing this so after the fact. My day job and some translation work has kept me busy.  

The Green Dragon Lady claims a posse or a platoon

So now the monkey wrench flies toward the gears of Latvia’s movement toward the Eurozone. Whether it hits and stops the wheels, we will see next week. However, it is hard to believe that Saeima deputy Iveta Grigule (Green/Farmers’ Union – ZZS) would go out on a risky limb and groundlessly claim that she has the 34 Saeima deputy signatures pledged that are needed to ask the president either to refuse to sign the law on adoption of the euro or submit it for a referendum, first gathering the signatures of at least 10% of the electorate.

The start of that process alone, even if it ultimately fails (insufficient signatures or the euro law is approved), is a major threat to the process of euro adoption, as has been pointed out earlier. In addition, there is yet another threat – that the whole attempt to block the law can trigger a kind of constitutional crisis in Latvia. Grigule has said that if President Andris Bērziņš refuses to act on the request by at least 34 deputies, she will take her case to Latvia’s Constitutional Court. Bērziņš could refuse, citing Article 68 of the Latvian Constitution, which requires at least 50 parliamentarians’ signatures if the disputed legislative act affects Latvia’s foreign relations and treaty obligations. In this case, it could be argued that rejecting the law on euro adoption is the same as backing out of the commitment made to eventually adopt the euro when Latvia joined the European Union (EU) in 2004.

Pro-euro politicians, including Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis, have argued that by passing laws regulating the practical and technical side of the switch from lats to euro, Latvia is simply fulfilling a commitment it implicitly made when the electorate voted in favor of joining the EU in 2003. The euro itself was not on the ballot, it was a yes or no to the EU, but the treaty Latvia signed committed it to adopting the euro when it met the Maastricht criteria, which it now seems to be doing after failing to do so in 2008 and 2011.

It is interesting how the issue would be framed before the Constitutional Court (and I am no expert on Latvian constitutional law). It seems that the Court would have to rule, explicitly or implicitly, on whether there was a Latvian treaty commitment to adopt the euro, which could be changed by a referendum rejecting the implementation law. The president’s rejection of a petition by less than 50 Saeima deputies would also mean that Bērziņš at least implicitly supports this interpretation. After all, if no international treaty commitment by Latvia would be affected by a potential referendum, then there was no commitment in force. The same if the court rules against Bērziņš. In effect, the issue of whether Latvia already “voted” to adopt the euro when it joined the EU and would be substantially modifying this commitment by stopping the implementation law,  or whether there was no such commitment, will end up decided by the Constitutional Court.

So far, so good for Iveta Grigule, who has become the opposition’s Dragon Lady to the coalition government and has probably lured Jānis Dombrava of the National Alliance to her lair. But what happens next, when Latvia is cast into the murky ozone as far as its relationship with the euro in general? After all, if there are no immediate or even medium-term plans to adopt the euro, then the lat could come under various kinds of pressure. If uncertainty jacks up interest rates and yields on the relatively few Latvian interest-bearing instruments available to foreign investors (or investors in general) rise, the lat could surge. Or it could plunge on uncertainty, fear and paranoia. How many millions is the Bank of Latvia ready to spend to stabilize the currency, and by what targets or standards? To keep it in a narrow ERM II corridor when being in the ERM II regime is in question?

No one seems to have a “we just postponed the euro indefinitely” scenario for a managed float of the lat – pegged to what?  Or not pegged, dancing around, to translate a (off)colorful Latvian expression – like a fart in a frying pan (kā pirdiens uz pannas)? All of these issues may come into focus next week, if the Dragon Lady gets her way. Question is – will the dragon be able to blow out any dangerous fires it sets? 

FYI: A platoon is a military unit typically composed of two to four sections or squads and containing 26 to 50 soldiers. The Dragon Lady claims she has her platoon,

Dear Latvian readers: the Green Dragon here has nothing to do with the national sport of alcoholism (zaļais pūķis). No such reference to Deputy Grigule is intended. 

The euro implementation vote is only the start

Latvia’s parliament, the Saeima, passed a law setting out the technical procedures for switching from its national currency the lat to the euro on January 1, 2014, assuming that it succeeds in getting the green light for admission to the Eurozone from the European Commission and the European Central Bank. 

The vote was a bare majority of 52 to 40, with one parliamentarian from the National Alliance, part of the governing coalition, Jānis Dombrava, voting against in what was permitted as a “vote based on conscience”. Just late last year, the National Alliance shook the coalition by suggesting it could oppose the euro (backing off from its early official position in favor of joining the eurozone). 

However, there could still be obstacles to a smooth entry. There is a less than trivial possibility that opposition Harmony Center will get three more parliamentarians (in addition to their own 31) to get the necessary 34 votes to request President Andris Bērziņš to initiate a referendum on whether Latvia should adopt the euro.

Saeima deputy Iveta Grigule of the opposition Green/Farmers’ Alliance (ZZS) said she would urge the other 12 members of her party in the Saeima to sign. ZZS faction leader Augusts Brigmanis had earlier said no one from the ZZS would sign.

Once the referendum ball gets rolling, Latvia would, like an airline unsure of its estimated time of arrival, lose the January 1, 2014 “slot” for joining the Eurozone. While Latvia has missed opportunities before in 2008 and 2011, when it did not fully meet the Maastricht criteria, it could also lose the current “window” of Maastricht compliant economic indicators. As Morten Hansen, an economist who teaches at the Stockholm School of Economics recently pointed out; Latvia’s export-driven economic growth could soon boost inflation above Maastricht limits. Assuming the country maintains steady, non-credit fueled high growth and moderate wage and price rises, this could have the paradoxical effect of shutting the Maastricht window on an otherwise sound economy.

This is what is at stake – indefinite postponement of euro adoption while still keeping the lat as a “virtual euro” pegged at 0.702 santims per euro unless someone comes up with a better idea. Indeed, if the idea of the parliamentary opposition is to back away from the Eurozone indefinitely, it might be wise to consider an alternative managed float for the lat, but this is not being discussed. Mostly, the debate has been framed in terms of avoiding various economic “cataclysms” such as a post-adoption jump in consumer prices, poor competitiveness that can no longer be counteracted by monetary policy (not that it could before, with no room for devaluation under the present very tight corridor) and demands to “pay the bills” of other wealthier, but economically more troubled Eurozone countries (the example is made that unemployed Greeks collect far more in benefits than a Latvian can earn working at a normal job).

A strong undercurrent of the anti-euro arguments is nationalism – the lat, launched in the 1920s from a menagerie of interim currencies and World War I occupation scrip – was replaced by the Soviet ruble in 1940 and reappeared again in 1993. Between the time Latvia regained its independence in 1991 and the re-launch of the lat, Latvian rubles were used and given the nickname of “repshies” after the then Governor of the Bank of Latvia Einārs Repše. For many Latvians the currency is a symbol of national sovereignty, like the red-white-red flag, also repressed under the Soviet occupation and carried out into the light again by some daring individuals during the perestroika period of the late 1980s. Latvians still recall the emotional raising of the red-white-red standard over what is now the Presidential Palace in 1988, on November 11, a pre-war day of remembrance for those who died in Latvia’s war for independence from 1918-1920.

If the opposition parliamentarians fail to get the referendum ball rolling, they can try to collect 30 000 signatures to initiate a referendum from below. Here they may get some sinister allies – among them, the “Antiglobalists” demanding Latvia re-instate the death penalty for “economic crimes” and, by the way, calling most of what has happened over the past 20 years a string of such crimes.

Point two of the Antiglobalists 2010 program calls for “starting a Nuremburg trial against those persons, by whose action or inaction over the past 20 years, the economic destruction and looting of Latvia took place and for political decisions, that harmed the Latvian state and nation.”

In other parts of the manifesto, the Antiglobalists call for a protectionist, autarkic and state-controlled economic system that, of necessity, implies Latvia’s exit from the European Union (EU) and, probably, from several international trade treaties.

Another bizarre addition to the extraparliamentary opposition to the euro is the “Gustavs Celmiņš Center”, which is a revived inter-war Latvian fascist movement under the name of its founder and leader Gustavs Celmiņš, who despite his sympathies for the Italian and German dictatorships of the 1930s, ended up in a German concentration camp. Celmiņš was liberated by US troops from another camp in Austria where he was held at the end of the war. Thereafter, according to Wikipedia, in 1949 he emigrated to the United States. From 1950 to 1952 he was an instructor at Syracuse University's Armed Forces school in New York State, and beginning in 1951 he was also the director of the Foreign Language program for the US Air Force, and a television lecturer about the USSR and communism. From 1954 to 1956 he worked as a manufacturer in Mexico. Between 1956 and 1958 he was a librarian at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. In 1959 he became a professor of Russian studies at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas. He died on 10 April 1968 in San Antonio, Texas.

As far as is known, Celmiņš steered clear of neo-Nazis in the US and actually began sabotaging the recruitment of Latvian Auxiliary Police that he was entrusted to do  during the German occupation, when it became clear some of these units would be used against civilians, including Jews.  Celmiņš modern-day fan club is openly anti-Semitic and its present leader Igors Šiškins (a Latvian despite his Slavic name), has served time for attempting to blow up the Soviet-era victory monument in Riga (the blast failed to seriously damage the monument).

Also forming a group within the Saeima to defend the lat are several deputies, led by Nikolajs Kabanovs of Harmony Center, whom many see as unsympathetic to “Latvian” causes. In effect, a strange informal alliance has formed between “pro-Russian” (an ethnic Russian) Kabanovs and the “renegade” nationalist Dombrava (Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis Unity Party has demanded an explanation and, possibly, sanctions for the young nationalist’s breach with coalition discipline).

My take is that if the parliamentarians don’t trigger a referendum, the loonazoids of the broader anti-euro movement are unlikely to be the ones on the front lines of gathering 30 000 signatures. Sociological studies show that Latvian society is conservative, politically authoritarian and economically statist/socialist, but most ordinary people would draw the line at throwing their signatures in with Šiškins or Kabanovs. The Antiglobalists ….perhaps.

Are the forces of "crusading ignorance" preparing to burn books in Latvia?

It is getting seriously deranged in this country, and hard to decide whether this is the culmination of one of the many processes that make Latvia a kind of failed state/society lite, or the start of a censorship and book-burning campaign by crazed religious fundamentalists.

It all started with a perhaps expensive (more that LVL 6000 for 500 print editions, an internet version and a teachers’guide) translated Danish children’s book with stories of small children switching gender roles for a day. The general idea is to put children in the place of others, to think what it would be like to play a girl’s traditional gender role (play with dolls) or for a girl to do “boy” things like team sports.

When Latvia’s Minister of Welfare Ilze Viņkele presented the book and the gender equality program, she was angrily criticized by a group of fundamentalist Christians. Some 50 Christian and “pro-family” groups also wrote letters to the Prime Minister, other government ministers and the media denouncing the book and asking for Vinķele’s resignation.

The reaction of Latvia’s holy rollers was hysterical, with one man claiming to be the father of six children suggesting on television that a book burning be organized. Many comments on the internet by people who had apparently never read the book saying that it was aimed at teaching homosexuality. Others saw it as a plot to deprave Latvia (as if a girl playing European football and a boy wearing a sweater with glitters was the height of moral collapse). It is almost as if Vinķele’s presentation of the book opened the depths of ignorance, religious fanaticism, and anti-Western or anti-modernist rage. It is like a time portal opened to the 19th century, if not the Middle Ages in a country that is outwardly a modern democracy and European Union member state.

Vinķele herself said that she feared book burning or physical violence could be the next step in the outrage by a segment of the public over what they see as “homosexual propaganda” in the kindergarten. Nothing, least of all facts and the views of modern science will convince these people otherwise. It almost makes one think that there was something positive about the Soviet Union’s “militant atheism” and anti-religious campaigns. A little of that might be useful, though as much at odds with democratic values and an open society (committed to freedom of belief) as the Soviet’s totalitarian crusade to repress everything except the secular religion of Communism. 

What will happen to "fundraiser" Hippety-Hop?

Fundraisers (why say beggars? Same thing.) around Riga's Central Station are nothing new. You get to know them by sight after a while. There is the cat and dog colony kept by one or more bums at the entrance to what I call the “Stockmann tunnel” (which leads from the Central Station square to the Stockmann department store and the Forum Cinemas multiplex). Also on the steps are an old woman sitting impassively and another woman who suffers from some neuromuscular disorder. Standing by Riga's and some say, northern Europe's busiest pedestrian crossing are a number of amputees, one with a crutch, the others double amputees in wheelchairs. There have been a number of “bum fights” between the man with the crutch and at least one of the guys in a wheelchair. Apparently there are territorial issues. The shouting during the fights is in Russian.

One of the most intriguing characters is a relatively young man (20s) on crutches with a a below-the-knee amputation, who I will call Hippety-Hop, because, until recently, he was a very forward and aggressive fundraiser, actually going out in traffic and hopping up to stopped cars to solicit alms. He also spends hours standing at one or the other of his favored positions (one is at the steps leading down to the Stockmann tunnel). Hippety-Hop can be there for hours, standing. Street-level fundraising is a full time job for him, as it is for many of the others. But given Hippety-Hop's stamina and vigor (until recently), one wonders what exactly happened to the man and why he is doing what he does – hopping around and plaintively fund-raising in Russian (or so I suppose). I saw him last summer when he was almost exclusively working the traffic lights and stopped cars.

Losing part of a leg is a major trauma, but it cannot compare to the disfigurement and degradation of the double amputees or the alcohol-ravaged bums. Why was Hippety-Hop, whatever his level of education, not offered some kind of rehabilitation and work? If the dude can stand for hours or hop around on his crutches, why not do factory work, if not in Latvia, then Ireland or the UK? Most European countries have programs to put the lightly (and in some cases, even the most severely physically handicapped) to work. In a call center, no one knows how many legs you have.

I don't think Hippety Hop has the language skills for this kind of work. Lately, it seems, he is on the downslope. His face shows signs of what I suspect is drug abuse. My guess is heroin, I have seen him in what seems to be a “nod”, eyes closed, impassive, face looking more ravaged than ever before. Last summer, when fundraising among the cars waiting for then lights to change there was even a vigor to his hop-step and an earnest look on his face as he almost demanded something from the drivers. Now it looks like the dude is down and out.

It looks like there may never have been a chance for Hippety-Hop to get back into a normal life after losing part of his leg, neither through the efforts of Latvia's rock-bottom impoverished social welfare system, nor through assistance from charities or non-governmental organizations. Of course, I don't know the full story, or, for that matter, any story about Hippety-Hop. For all I know, his injury may have been the result of recklessness, part of a stupid, risk-taking lifestyle.

Certainly heroin is not a good choice. Latvia doesn't, as far as I know, have open, non-judgmental needle exchange or methadone programs (I don't know because I don't hang around with any junkies). So every time Hippety-Hop snorts or shoots up, he risks overdosing, or, if using the needle , HIV or hepatitis.

Will Hippety-Hop last out the summer? Who knows? Ironically, he may go down before his fellow fundraisers, the bums wallowing in the dog and cat colony, the old lady, the woman with the neuromuscular thing, even the double amputees and bumfighters. I know almost nothing about social work, but at least some months ago, it may possibly have pulled Hippety-Hop off the street and out of this particular form of fundraising.

More on the Latvian referendum and the Nisei Russians

Well, the balagāns (carnival) of sorts is over. The outcome of the referendum was clear to start with. More interesting are the results of the referendum when analyzed as a kind of survey or popularity poll. Clearly, something is the matter in Latgale, the eastern region of Latvia, and it is not only that most people there seem to be happy speaking Russian. Even before the vote, Latgallians were dissatisfied with new government rules preventing the daily crossing of the Russian border to bring back cheaper motor fuel, cigarettes, alcohol and other goods. For many “bordertown” inhabitants, this essentially “legal smuggling” for resale was a means of survival. According to some reports, when the new policies were announced, there was a near-riot in Rēzekne.

In the long term, ways have to be found to create jobs in Latgale and to at least slow down the emigration that has taken around 20% of the region's population since the last census in 2000.

The point has also been made that something has to be done to resolve issues with the so-called Russian speakers. Mostly it seems to a kind of Rodney Dangerfield complex (the late American comedian known for his repetitive line: I don't get no respect). Since just what this means, exactly, is hard to define, maybe people should talk about it.

I suspect the Rodney Dangerfield thing is something that afflicts sovoks a lot more than it affects the part of the population I called the Nisei Russians (like the second and onwards generation ethnic Japanese in the US). The Slavic Nisei are people who are fully aware that they are no longer living in the Russian motherland and, for whatever benefits their country of residence offers, there are certain sacrifices. One is that Russian is not the state language, but that it is respected or at least benignly neglected as long as you can communicate in whatever the local language is.

When Latvians arrived in the US as refugees after World War II, they learned English, and when many Latvians moved to English-speaking countries to seek work in recent years, they also had to speak English. No one is going to make their language the new state language, although countries suddenly facing significant numbers of Latvians are taking pragmatic steps to ensure that important matters are explained to them in Latvian – basic laws and regulations, procedures for dealing with the authorities, perhaps safety rules at some workplaces.

This is nothing new – countries with large migrant labor communities provide services in their languages, be it Turkish in Germany, Finnish or Serbo-Croatian in Sweden. However, by the second or third generation at the latest, the descendants of the immigrant laborers are fluent in the local language, sometimes, perhaps all too often, at the cost of their “native language”. For this reason, places like Sweden even offer home language teaching. This leads to bizarre employment ads seeking instructors (with higher education) to teach an obscure African language spoken mostly by illiterate goatherds.

What I mean to say is that there is a range of options short of adding new official languages for dealing with a significant and often permanent population that doesn't speak the local and indigenous language. In the time of the Nisei Russians (who had been there for generations) in Latvia, the Russian language was also handled pragmatically. Latgale, already a problem child back then, prevented Latvian being enshrined as a state language in the 1922 constitution. Someone wanted the Latgallian dialect (with different spellings and pronounciations) also made a state language. Latvian was later made a de facto state language in practice and by later legislation, but as I understand it, made it into the constitution only in 1998. In the Saeima, where most deputies were multilingual, indigenous languages such as German, Russian and Yiddish could be spoken, bu the transcripts of proceedings were published in Latvian.

Back in the 1920s and 1930s, except for some historical irritation with the Germans, the local ex-lords and landowners, languages had largely co-evolved, with only Russian being briefly pressured on certain parts of Latvia at certain times under the Czars when it was decided to russify the non-Slavic peoples of the Russian Empire. So no language, except for German, was politically loaded and even then, it was resented rather than resisted because no one was forcing on free citizens in a free country.

It was the Soviet Union, led mostly by Russians cowering under a fearsome Georgian, that weaponized the Russian language and turned it on the non-Russian peoples of the aptly named prison of nations. Russian was going to be the common language of a Soviet people to be forged, first by the subtractive terror of executing, deporting or imprisoning national elites and national bourgeois elements, then by “gentler” proactive methods of teaching a Soviet newspeak that closely resembled Russian. Along with it, to Latvia, came the first speakers of Soviet Russian, many of them descendants of ethnic Russian or other Slavic peoples who had already had been put through one or two runs of the Soviet grinder.

The result was that the Soviet Russian used in publications and official speech also embodied or in various ways served the totalitarian regime that the Soviet occupation brought with it. It was, after a while, the Slavic language of sovoks – homo sovieticus by another name – but often, too, of lowlife and criminals (maybe I am mistaken, but the Soviet industrialized Baltic states were a place of work release for large numbers of Soviet criminals finishing their sentences for ordinary crimes). The Russian of the Soviet era (OK, I don't speak a word of it, so I am told and have read) became the carrier of totalitarian lies and nonsense in one aspect of a pretty unpleasant life, and the bljed! suka!bellowing drunk ex-jailbird neighbor pounding on the door because his wife has locked him out again in another side of Soviet reality.

Latvia's Nisei Russians, who for the most part were ordinary folk who celebrated Christmas in January and celebrated Easter for hours with kissing all around, were buried under the sovok avalanche dumped on the country under Soviet rule. They were lumped with the Russian-speaking sovoks and I have spotted a few Nisei in my circle of aquaintances. Back in the day, most Russians in Latvia spoke at least some Latvian, and it was not a threat to what they were.

However, the new Soviet world permeated by sovok-Russian was a direct threat to Latvians and Latvia's indigenous nationalities, it was a weaponized language aimed at making sovoks of everyone, with real Soviet Russians being just a bit more equal that others.

It is this attitude, that of Soviet Russian privilege, that has survived the end of Soviet rule in Latvia and has not been moderated in many cases by attempts at “integration”. Even without examining the practical effectiveness or theoretical validity of Latvia's integration efforts, it seems obvious that while immigrants can, in many societies, integrate “upwards” from the “lower” status of new arrivals to being accepted or even part of the elite (see how Latvian-born Laila Freivalds became a minister in Sweden), it is harder, if not impossible for self-proclaimed or self-deluded elites to “integrate” in a direction they perceive as downwards. For Tovarsich Bljed-Suka adjusting to a free Latvia where he had to speak the Dog Language was a serious challenge. In many cases it still is. That is what the referendum was about for many Latvians.

Weaponizing the Russian language in Latvia again

When I wrote about the successful signature campaign by Latvian citizens to make Russian the second state language, I got some comments on Twitter and elsewhere that “a language is just a language” and it was somehow wrong to associate demands for Russian as a state language with the Soviet policy of Russification.

This is surprising, except when it comes from the generation that doesn't fully remember what the Soviet Union was like. To be honest, I didn't live in Latvia then, but I participated in many emigre Latvian activities, including demonstrations against the Soviet russification policy, which consisted both of imposing the Russian language on the Baltic populations and massively importing Russian-speaking labor (at least to Estonia and Latvia). The latter means of russification ended with the collapse of the USSR in 1991.

The actions of Balts abroad were based on personal experience (visiting the Baltic States), anecdotal stories and academic research (including a book by the Latvian political scientist and present-day Saeima deputy Rasma Kārkliņa) that characterized policies regarding the use of Russian in non-Russian Soviet republics as part of the policy of russification. It is probably beyond reasonable dispute that the Russian language, during the Soviet era, but also with precedents in Czarist Russia as far as the Baltic were concerned, was used as a weapon of state policy aimed at subjugating and, eventually, assimilating the Baltic nations to some greater, Russian-dominated ethnos.

The Soviets made it clear-- the future belonged to a Russian-speaking new Soviet people that would have erased all traces of the diverse national identities that had been (in some cases forcibly) incorporated into the USSR. Those policies were terminated with the collapse of the USSR, but it is reasonable to say that the widespread post-Soviet knowledge of Russian, whatever merits one can ascribe to it otherwise, could also be described as one of the badges of occupation. In other words, on a “but for” basis, many Latvians would not speak Russian but for the occupation of Latvia for 50 years, a period of time when they were compelled to learn Russian. Above and beyond Russian as a compulsory subject in school, there were also campaigns (proclaimed in the Latvian-language Soviet press) exhorting people to improve their Russian and emphasizing the role of Russian as the basis for the new Soviet nation of the future.

As a language learned by compulsion during the totalitarian occupation of Latvia, Russian can be seen as a weapon that has left its impact on most Latvians (and non-Russians in Latvia, such as Armenians, Poles, Georgians, etc.), even if that impact has entirely benign consquences today (buying a beer at a Moscow bar, watching Russian movies, whatever). However, those consquences are benign only because the regime of Russian domination and compulsory teaching of Russian has ended. If it had not, “Russianspeakingness” would continue to be a sympton of russification and a badge of occupation and dominance by a foreign power.

The successful signature campaign to restore Russian as a state language in an independent Latvian state, reviving, at least formally, the status it had in the Soviet Union, is an effort to make Russian a weaponized language again. Since there is little or no evidence that ethnic Russians in Latvia cannot conduct most of their daily lives speaking Russian, there is no logical need to make Russian a second state language except to make it a weapon again.

To be sure, it is a weak and irrational weapon if, as some suggest, it is aimed at expressing some kind of protest by the “Russian-speaking” (read ethnic Russian) citizenry for not getting a share of political power after the recent election. Unfortunately, their poster-boy, Riga mayor Nils Ušakovs, ran mostly as a populist social democrat, attracting some ethnic Latvian votes. His Harmony Center party (Saskaņas centrs/SC) was acting like a party of Russians, not a Russian party pushing for specific issues relating to Russians as a significant minority in Latvian. As a “Russian” party, SC should have agitated for more adult education in Latvian as a foreign language to make more citzens functionally bi-lingual as well as for home language instruction to keep Russian children form losing their native language (something the USSR never did for minorities living outside their borders). Most non-Russian Latvian citizens would have no issues with that. But those Latvians, who don't see Russian as “just another language”, should object against having a weapon pointed at them again. 

How badly did “FukTuk” Fuck Up? If at all?

I just had to use that title. “FukTuk” (with the fuk like some Brits say, well, you know...) is how Latvians often pronounce the acronym for the Financial and Capital Markets Commission, Finanšu un kapitāla tirgus komisija or FKTK, the financial markets supervision and regulatory commission. The agency has been getting a lot of criticism recently after the looting of Latvijas Krājbanka, the Latvian Savings Bank, and its parent bank, Lithuania's Snoras, by their main shareholder, Vladimir Antonov and his lackeys.

On the one hand, it would seem that by offering to resign, the head of FKTK (FCMC is the English acronym) Irēna Krūmane, has admitted that – here we go again – FKTK fucked up. But this is actually a wrong and ignorant interpretation of events, even if mistakes were made. The mistakes didn't concern the direct regulatory and supervisory functions of FKTK. It was more of a public relations problem (Krūmane, who was out of town, may have sent the wrong people with inadequate briefing on what to say, to explain the Krājbanka fiasco) and the problem of having to face down ignorant media and the public, screaming for someone's, anyone's blood.

Strictly speaking, Krūmane's resignation is like a head of the national police resigning because the crime rate isn't zero. Well, almost. To have a crime rate of zero, you would have to have one cop following, say, every one or two citizens (an impossibility) and also have absolutely no corrupt or fallible cops who could be persuaded to join, rather than fight criminals (after all there is a lot of money and excitement in crime).

That is not how the system of criminal justice and law works. It works mostly by self-regulation and a number of other individual and social mechanisms. Most people, for one reason or another, stay within sight of the boundaries set by The Ten Commandments, or at least those, that apply to transitive actions (those affecting the rights of others). That may exclude idolatry – the having of other gods, etc, and another “ultry” reserved for – adults – that goes with the coveting your neighbors' wife and all that. But it certainly covers stealing, slaying, and, to a large extent, bearing false witness. That is because you have to be pretty much of a sorry-ass, evil fucker to do any of that, and most people are not like that, or evolution would have reduced us thousands of years ago to a small, about to be extinct pack of upright apes snarling and fighting with each other for the last bananas in some remote jungle. That's not how things are.

Peer pressure and the need to have the respect of others are also powerful restraints on the urge to do any kind of batshit stuff, whether it harms anyone or not. Driving up to a cloister, blowing your horn in the middle of the night, waking the nuns and then mooning them standing on the roof of your car really doesn't hurt anyone and would make a great and gross teenage movie scene, but it is not what you want on the front page of the newpaper. Nor do you want to make the evening TV news for being shitfaced at the wheel of your car as the cameras show up and then go into a racist rant about Uigurs or some other obscure nationality as the police take you away. Nobody, well, almost nobody, wants that kind of shit.

It is more or less the same with the financial system. Like the police, Krūmane could reasonably go to sleep at night on the assumption that most of those she rides herd on would not simply up and break every rule for the hell of it. In fact, with two layers of checking and regulation provided by the internal controls and risk management of any financial organization, combined with regular checks by independent auditors, there is enough of a self-running system to keep things on the straight and level. Finally, there are the regulators, seeing to it that the others are at least equipped, set up and ready to do their jobs. This means credit committees, risk managers and a lot of double checking and signing off on stuff before any other people's money is utilized. That is what banks are – other people's and enterprises' money entrusted to the bank or other financial actor. One shouldn't fuck with that, nor go unpunished for doing so.

What happened at Krājbanka is that, despite most of the necessary checks, balances and scarecrows (the idea of being jailed in disgrace keeps fingers off the cash like a scarecrow spooks the crows)being in place, the bank's managing board chairman Ivars Priedītis did go batshit and pledge some LVL 100 million in assets as collateral for loans made to Vlad the dude with a sportcar jones and his various projects. Priedītis had been a pretty straight and honest guy before that, but the mo-fo simply went or was pushed over the edge into crime when he agree to sign off on the deals on an adventure of his own. Apparently, the rest of the bank management knew fuck-all about it, or maybe merely suspected something. They certainly didn't suspect Vlad, assuming that several national intelligence agencies could have the dude's past in Russia all wrong. So maybe he found the cash needed to start his bank in paper bag in a Moscow back alley. Hey, those were the days in the Wild, Wild East.

So what failed was not really Krūmane and the system under her. The system is based largely on trust (most information is not submitted by liars). What failed was one guy, perhaps a few more people going rogue. Some financial institutions with some of the best monitoring and internal controls have had traders cut loose and create enormous losses, if not bring the whole motherfucker down if they were unlucky enough. Taking the wrong side of some financial derivative instruments can cause losses big enough to warp spacetime around them, dwarfing anything that Priedītis pulled off. Lucky that that didn't happen in Latvia, which is not to say that it couldn't be done. Just most people in the business won't try it.

You can do all the checks and cross checks you want, but no system is God, and most run themselves adequately, thank you. It is foolish to think anything can or should be designed to be everywhere all at once. Don't blame the overseers for failing to do or be that.

By offering to resign, Krūmane has actually thrown herself on her sword as a PR stunt to restore some trust in the FKTK. The blogger and political scientist Iveta Kažoka made this point about trust in the financial system being undermined by Krūmane's communication style. Her appeal for Krūmane to resign was borderline strident. But for Krūmane it was probably a tactically right move to keep the dogs from tearing apart the institution by thowing herself to them (sword, now dogs is only a sign that it is late and I am tired from pulling all sorts of shit for my employer over the weekend in Stockholm to in order get and do an important interview). When it is all over, whoever takes her place should remember that sitting in that chair, no one will excuse you because sometimes things just happen (“honest Ivars” at Krājbanka went wacko), and they will crucify you for not being god even if you said you couldn't be.