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Originally Posted by la aurora
This video was made by British guy who has Latvian wife. Of course it's just an 'opinion' of 1 person and it can't be taken as 100% truth. I do believe he exaggerated a bit even.
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It's an interesting video (i have no doubt that there is an extreme-right in Latvia) but the person who made it loses credibility when you read his comments, he goes as far as to say that Latvian people do not really exist and that the Latvian language is just some primitive Russian dialect.
The Latvian language is part of the Baltic family of Indo-European languages, that family is no more and no less related to the Slavic or Germanic ones, it's not a Slavic sub-group, it's a language family in its own right.
Linguists actually find the Baltic family (particularly Lithuanian) to be extremely interesting since it has kept many archaic features and its comparison with Sanskrit and Ancien Greek is a great help to determine what the original Proto-Indo-European language looked like.
As for Latvian people, the presence in the area of
tribes who were clearly Indo-European but distinct from Slavic and Germanic tribes is historically well attested (notably by Teutonic Knights and Scandinavian sailors).
Balts are not a Russian (or even Slavic) sub-group.
Other than that, i mostly agree with simon (except about US bases in Europe obviously). Russia can't expect people who were colonized and russified by force to be greatful for what was done to them. People can easily reconcile (French and Germans are proof of that) but faults have to be officially acknowledged by the states.
The main thorn in EU/NATO relations with Russia is that the Russian regime is becoming more and more authoritarian and that can't be good for anyone.
And regarding the citizenship issue of ethnic Russians in Estonia and Latvia, as far as i understand it, Latvia and Estonia decided to grant citizenship to all residends except those who were sent there as Russian colonists during the Soviet occupation after 1940, which is their right and understandable considering those colonists were part of a forced russification process of the area.
And it's not like Russians don't have a homeland, they have a massive 17 million km2 one right next to Latvia, surely that's big enough and they don't need the small Latvian territory.