"Oh, well, the Baltics have discriminatory citizenship policies against people that are only there as a result of an ethnic colonization scheme by a country that should have never controlled them in the first place, so they're obviously on par with Saudi Arabia and worse than Iran!"
I mean Estonia and Latvia had some awful citizenship policies albeit for understandable reasons (basically they both only granted automatic citizenship to all who could prove residence in the country before the Soviet invasion of 1940: which meant that a big chunk of people the vast majority of whom were ethnic Russians who were suddenly stateless people; both states made them go through naturalisation and Latvia especially put up loads of barriers to citizenship until the EU told them to knock it off if they wanted to join). Lithuania shouldn't be on the same list; they automatically granted Lithuanian residents to all legal residents in the Lithuanian SSR when they declared independence.
Those decisions were made many, many years ago and you're starting to see the barriers break down a bit: young Russian-Estonians and Russian-Latvians generally speak both Russian and the language of their country (and also English are well usually; especially if they're planning to work elsewhere in the EU: children of resident aliens are granted citizenship automatically) and while they identify as Russian still its becoming a distinct identity to Russians who live in Russia: more distinctly linked to the country that they've lived in: and linked to Europe more broadly as well. A really interesting topic; really... I think the stigma against Russians (in terms of those living in the country rather than the Russian state) is inwinding: the Centre party are in government in Estonia at the moment (sans Savisaar; thankfully) and in Riga you've had a Russian mayor for a fair few years who still seems to be really quite popular, although his party (Harmony) still haven't participated in government despite topping the poll in the last bunch of elections. A positive thing, really...
Nothing to do with this thread really; I probably should post it in the other one instead!
