*There has recently been significant intensification of conflict over issues of language and citizenship in the Baltic. After giving a brief historical background to the language situation in this region, this article examines the recent politics of the Baltic language laws – which restored the national languages as the sole official language of each country – and, in the case of Estonia and Latvia, the citizenship laws which required Soviet period settlers to pass a language test for citizenship. In the early 1990s this was essentially an international relations conflict between the Baltic countries and Russia, which strongly defends the former status and privileges of 'Russian speakers' and continues to exert pressure on these issues today. However, in recent years a perhaps even more serious conflict has arisen between the Baltic states and Western European organisations, particularly the OSCE, which defines the conflict as one of national minorities, and whose recommendations may have a bearing on acceptance of the Baltic states into wider European structures. Research shows the conflict has only to a limited extent been a local conflict between the different language communities: contrary to the urgings of some leaders, Soviet period settlers overwhelmingly accept the legitimacy of language laws, and language use patterns have now progressively changed from those of the Soviet period. Despite this, there has continued to be intense pressure on the Baltic states, which culminated in the OSCE forcing changes to citizenship laws upon Latvia, leading to a closely fought referendum in that country in October 1998. The OSCE campaign has been based upon invocations of international norms in language and citizenship which are found to be poorly jurisprudentially based, and concerned to impose a single model for language relations quite unsuited to the Baltic situation.