Baltic identity crisis: dangerous politicisation of languages | Opinion

The Slavic people in the Baltics expect the Baltics to learn and speak Slavic languages, such as the Russian

For reasons I fail to understand, the Slavic people in the Baltics are making their outmost efforts to circumvent the “Baltic” component of this branch of languages, but expect the Baltics to learn and speak Slavic languages, such as the Russian, which has even reached the formal and compulsory secondary education curriculum in the Baltic republics.

This is really puzzling and makes you wonder why such a close (if any) linguistic connection is so polarised and repelled by itself. I have even heard about Poles and Russians having been born and lived their whole life in the Baltics and not bother or make any effort to learn the language.

Moreover, geneticist show indisputable evidence that Lithuanians and Latvians are not part of the Slavic genetic pool, challenging the very foundations of this Balto-Slavic association.

The point at which this association becomes very distasteful and even criminal is the numerous ethnocidal oppressions and occupations of ethnic Balts throughout the history.

During the times of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Polish nobility actively enforced polonisation in the Baltics to an extent where only the isolated peasants and village dwellers knew how to speak a Baltic language, even the ethnically Baltic dukes and kings were polonised.