Factors influencing national identity awareness in Latvia: opinions of Latvian- and Russian-speakers

Factors influencing national identity awareness in Latvia: opinions of Latvian- and Russian-speakers

Inga Sergeiceva, Jeļena Avanesova Identity is a widely popularized concept nowadays. Overall, this term characterizes the affiliation with a particular social or cultural group, which allows each person to define his or her place in life. There are different kinds of identities. The one to be observed in this research is national identity. National identity is one of the most important and topical issues in modern Latvian society and political arena. Thus, for instance, the guidelines on national identity, civil society and integration policy were set in 2011. In this document national identity concept was defined in a way closely connected to ethnical identity notion. However, several ethnicities representatives have lived on the territories of Latvia for decades. Therefore, the main questions of this research is if understanding of national identity and aspects affecting national identity awareness are same for Latvians and Russian-speakers of Latvia. To answer the stated question, the interviews with various field experts done by the University of Latvia Philosophy and Sociology Institute were analysed in this paper and especially the questions asking about the positive or negative  influence  of regional and religious identity on national identity awareness of Latvian inhabitants. Moreover, experts commented how various stakeholders (the State, businesses, non-governmental organizations (NGO), foreign and international organizations) influence the formation of national identity in Latvia. It could be concluded that in general both Russian-speakers and Latvians have similar opinions on the influence of various stakeholders on national identity awareness. All respondents view businesses to be neutral, but NGO – potentially important, but not using their potential. The most significant influence was considered to be from the State authorities (both positive and negative), while impact of foreign and international organizations were questionable. Latvians find that regional identities significantly influence the national identity awareness, while Russian-speakers find this influence to be insubstantial. Same time, Russian-speakers had more opinion on religious identity influence. However, both groups of respondent see the role of religious identity to be unsubstantial.