Although a number of commentaries exist on the citizenship question in Estonia and Latvia, there is as yet no study that develops a conceptual framework which considers the particularity of these citizen-state formations and the implications that follow for ethnic relations. Based on a series of decrees culminating in their respective citizenship laws of 1992 and 1994, both Estonia and Latvia opted to exclude a third of their permanent residents, made up mostly of the Russian-speaking population, from being granted an automatic right to membership of the citizenpolity. This differed from the other post-Soviet states who granted citizenship to all those permanently residing within their bounded territory at the moment the declaration of statehood. This article, therefore, aims to redress this blank spot in conceptual theorizing by considering Estonia and Latvia as polities that come close to resembling ethnic democracies.

While it is true that many nations and nationalities have come to be identified with a particular language group, linguistic homogeneity is by no means a sufficient or necessary marker of a nation or nationality. And yet, language is often used as a marker, not only to define a people or a nation, but, perhaps more importantly, is used by a people to set themselves apart from others. “Groups tend to define themselves not by reference to their own characteristics but by exclusion, that is, by comparison to ‘strangers’.” The use of language allows for a clear-cut division between “natives” and “aliens.”

The Gulag Handbook states that in 1936 “the entire native populations of Finns, Estonians, Letts, Lithuanians, Poles, and Romanians…were transported” from the border zone of the USSR. Many such peoples began to appear unreliable through Stalinist eyes because they “had relatives across the border,” and “might undermine [propaganda that people] abroad were suffering and that no better life existed than that in the USSR.” Several former officers of the security police confirm that the 1930s saw purges of “unreliable elements” from border regions, including not only “class aliens” and political malcontents, but also minorities whose kinship with populations of neighboring states facilitated the movement of people and of information across borders. More importantly, numerous personal accounts gave rise to the perception in the contemporary Finnish government and popular circles that their brethren were being systematically eliminated from the Soviet borders with Finland and Estonia.

In 1919, Polish nationalist forces led by Josef Pilsudski succeeded in re-establishing an independent Polish state. Poland had disappeared from the map of Europe in 1794 following the third partition. It had been devoured by its traditional enemies; Prussia, Austria and Russia. Historically, Poland had been a state without fixed borders, and via a combination of changing dynastic alliances and a pattern of eastward migration, from the twelfth century formerly Slav areas east of the rivers Oder and Neisse became progressively germanicized. By 1921, following the end of World War I, several peace conferences, and after a series of referenda in disputed (former) German areas and a series of wars with all of its neighbors, including an especially successfully prosecuted war against the embryonic Soviet Union, the new state had managed to become a state which incorporated virtually all ethnic Poles. However, in addition to incorporating the overwhelming majority of ethnic Poles, the borders of the new Polish state also included huge numbers of other ethnic, religious and national groups.

Die Geschichte der deutsch-ukrainischen Beziehungen seit dem Ersten Weltkrieg ist nicht unkompliziert. Mit der deutschen Unkenntnis über die Ukraine paarten sich vom Militär und dem Auswärtigen Amt vertretene Ausbeutungsabsichten, die nur wenig verstellt eine Kolonisierung der Ukraine anstrebten. Ihnen standen bei denselben Instanzen Pläne zur Revolutionierung (und Ausschaltung) des Russischen Reiches zur Seite. Politische Kreise hofften auf eine Mithilfe der “Randvölker” dabei und gewannen deren Nationalisten als Verbündete. Aber ebensowenig wie Alfred Rosenberg im Zweiten Weltkrieg von altruistischen Erwägungen geleitet war, wurde hier auch nur für einen Augenblick der Primat des Eigennutzes außer acht gelassen. Mit den Parteigängern der ukrainischen Selbständigkeit kämpfte zudem auch die “russische Schule” des Otto Hoetzsch, die gemeinsame Interessen der starken Großmächte Rußland und Deutschland postulierte.

In the late 1920s, the New York Public Library received as gifts and on exchange a large collection of books, pamphlets and periodicals in the minority languages of the Soviet Union. These materials remained in storage in the Library's Annex—uncataloged, but not unclassified, albeit superficially—until the spring of 1994. These acquisitions also included materials in the languages of neighboring countries, as well as books for the well-established immigrant population in the Soviet Union speaking Estonian, Latvian, German, and Polish.