Chapter 14
Citizenship and nationality
The situation of the users of revived Livonian in Latvia
The last native-born speaker of Livonian, the aboriginal Baltic-Finnic language of Latvia, died in
Canada in 2012. The last mother-tongue speaker on Latvian soil died some years before that. However, encouraged by
Latvia’s nationality policy since it regained independence from the USSR in 1991, people of Livonian heritage are
encouraged to identify themselves as Livonian even in their passports, and a new generation of heritage speakers is
taking classes in the language. This is a reversal of former Soviet policy, one of benign neglect, and a refusal by
the regime in the last years of the independent republic (1934–1940) to acknowledge or allow the use of the
language.
Becoming citizens of the new republic was simultaneous, for many people, with declaring their
nationality within the new state. This chapter traces the history of this small ethnic minority’s relationship with
the state – Tsarist Russian, then Latvian, then Soviet, then Latvian again – and the vicissitudes that the spoken,
written, and above all taught, Livonian language had to pass through to reach its present precarious status as a
marginal heritage language in a relatively newly independent state in Europe.
The chapter will be illustrated with documentary evidence of the Livonian language’s use in
writing and education in Latvia down to the present day.
Article outline
- 1.Preliminaries
- 2.Early history
- 3.Doom
- 4.Resurgence
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Notes
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References