The Political Integration of Minorities in New European Democracies: The uses

of inheritance in democratic competition1

by

Zsuzsa Csergő

Queen‘s University

Department of Political Studies

csergo@queensu.ca

Paper prepared for the American Political Science Association Conference, September 4, 2009

Toronto, Canada

This paper represents work in progress. Please do not cite without the author’s

permission.

I would like to thank Tyson Hay and Caroline Duvieusart-Dery for their research assistance; and to

Patrice McMahon, Jennie Schulze, Oded Haklai, and Jacques Bertrand for valuable suggestions and

comments on earlier drafts. The research was funded in part by the Queen‘s University Principal‘s

Development Fund and by Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada.

Minority integration has emerged as a highly salient political issue in most contemporary

democracies, triggering debates among both scholars and policy-makers about the appropriate

approach to preventing or resolving problems that ethno-cultural minority populations present to

democratic states. The notion that minorities present an inherent problem to state stability,

especially at times of significant institutional change, is a controversial yet still widely

represented assumption in the literature and well summarized in the following statement:

―Migration, fragmentation, and annexation have been contributing to ethnocultural diversity on a

global scale. These trends are of interest to political scientists because multiethnic states are at

some risk of experiencing violent ethnic conflict, secessionist movements, and government-

sponsored ethnic cleansing.‖ (Hechter and Okamoto, 2001:189)

In the democratizing region of post-Cold War Europe, questions of minority integration

are intertwined with larger issues concerning regional and international security. In the

immediate aftermath of the dramatic collapse of regimes and dismemberment of states in former

Soviet bloc, political elites in Western Europe became concerned that majority-minority conflicts

emerging in the post-Communist region might threaten the entire continent‘s security and

weaken the democratic peace and prosperity that have been gradually established in Western

Europe since World War II. This fear became the driving force behind the European Union‘s so-

called Eastern Enlargement project, which aimed to bring these new democracies into the fold of

the integrating European Union (EU). Driven by concerns over competitive nation-building in

this region—where the great majority of states were newly established or reconstituted after

1990, most states encompassed ethno-cultural minorities that resisted the ―titular‖ ethnicities‘

policies of national homogenization, and most of the minority populations that challenged such

homogenizing efforts had kin-states in the neighborhood—European institutions established

minority protection as one of the main criteria that aspiring states had to satisfy in order to gain

admission. Membership conditionality—that is, the systematic use of the incentives of future

membership as an instrument for domestic policy change—became the primary strategy that

these institutions (the Council of Europe and the European Union) employed to persuade

governments in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to design accommodative minority policies.

As result of security concerns, the principle of ―minority rights‖ gained a level of significance

unprecedented in previous waves of EU expansion, with the 1993 Copenhagen Criteria

identifying ―the protection of national minorities‖ as one of the main criteria for membership. In

the process, the integrating Europe became the framework of arguably the most densely

institutionalized minority rights regime in any region in the world, through a series of documents

that included, among others, the CSCE‘s 1990 Copenhagen Document; the Council of Europe‘s

1992 European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and 1995 Framework Convention

for the Protection of National Minorities; and the OSCE‘s 1998 Oslo Recommendations

Regarding the Linguistic Rights of National Minorities. Moreover, European institutions,

primarily the OSCE through the office of the High Commissioner for National Minorities,

invested unprecedented efforts into encouraging interethnic reconciliation and discouraging

discrimination through ―EU conditionality.‖ (Linden, 2002; Ram 2003; McMahon 2007; Wolff

and Weller 2008)

Although the specific forms that minority protection should take were not mandated by

European institutions, a broadly shared expectation was that ―Europeanization‖ and

democratization together would moderate nationalist aspirations. According to this logic, by

eliminating the threat of violent confrontation both across and within state borders, supranational

integration should encourage consensual democratic government that would benefit both

―titular‖ majority populations and minorities, ultimately resulting not only in minority protection

but also in the greater political integration of minorities. Minority protection, minority rights,

and minority integration became parts of a common repertoire of concepts from which the future

European continent could be constructed as a space where transnational integration engenders

peaceful and voluntary political integration also at the lower levels of government, and this

system of multi-level governance would maintain a broader community that is simultaneously

well-integrated and richly multicultural.

Yet almost two decades after the beginning of the process of ―transition‖ from

Communism to democracy and from the Soviet bloc to the EU, we know remarkably little about

the resulting patterns of minority integration and/or continuing majority-minority competitions

for cultural reproduction in the region. In an effort to advance our understanding of those

patterns, this paper proposes a definition of political integration that focuses on the way

minorities use political resources to negotiate claims in the framework of democratic

contestation. In the CEE countries that have joined the EU since 2004 as consolidated

democracies, significant variation emerged in this respect. This paper explores the question of

how different types of minorities have participated in the institutions of democratic contestation,

by focusing on the distinction between historic/territorial and non-historic/territorial minorities.

Perhaps the most consistent principle in European norm and practice in this domain has

been the assumption of inherited rights to institutions, according to which (a) members of the

state majority have an a priori right to the state, while (b) the rights of minorities are structured

by a hierarchical distinction between historic minorities and immigrant groups. According to

this distinction, historic communities claim institutional rights on the basis of a lengthy history

on a territory they consider their ―homeland,‖ and they usually have a historical narrative,

geography, and literature that perpetuate the link between the territory and the community.

Immigrant groups, by contrast, have no ―homeland narrative‖ about a link between people and

territory and, consequently, rarely articulate collective institutional claims. This distinction

between historic/territorial communities and immigrants is well developed in the literature.

(Esman 1994; Kymlicka 1995; 2001) Although the legitimacy of the distinction as a source of

minority policy remains highly contentious in liberal theory (Barry 2001), it remains a significant

organizing principle in the European framework. (Keating, McGarry, and Moore 2009) From

the perspective of minority integration in the new European framework, then, the question

addressed in this paper is how the historic vs non-historic distinction influences the way

minorities make use of newly established institutions of democratic competition.

The framework: Minorities’ political integration in the EU accession zone

An increasing amount of valuable scholarship emerged in the last two decades about the

impact of EU integration and enlargement on the treatment of minorities in Central and East

European (CEE) states. In the first decade of EU conditionality, the predominant scholarly

agenda was to take account of the institutional and policy changes resulting from EU

enlargement in the area of minority protection and rights. The predominant approach in the

scholarship that emerged from that agenda focused primarily on the successes of EU influence in

brokering bilateral ―friendship treaties‖ between states, moderating exclusive or restrictive

citizenship and language policies, and generally ―taming ethnic hatred‖ throughout the region.

(Kelley 2004; Vachudova, 2005; McMahon 2007) An expanding body of research represents

more critical approaches to ―EU conditionality,‖ highlighting the absence of a coherent minority

rights regime at the European level and the limitations of European minority rights documents;

and providing explanations for the successes in minority accommodation that emphasize the

significance of domestic actors as agents of change. (Vermeersch 2003; Sasse 2004, 2005;

Csergo 2007; Stefan and Weller 2008) Still, the overwhelming majority of scholarly works

continue to focus on the policy side of minority integration. The questions most often asked

relate to the extent to which processes of EU accession have influenced changes in minority

policy in the areas of citizenship law, language rights, employment rights, and socio-economic

mobility. The primary debate continues to center on the question of whether recognizable

successes in policy changes (that is, increased minority accommodation) should be attributed to

the EU accession process or rather to internal/domestic processes.

If we want to understand the international-domestic dynamics of political integration,

however, we need more comparative work that goes beyond the exploration of policy changes.

An important question to ask is how minorities ―inhabit‖ democratic polities established by new

governments after 1990 and shaped in significant ways by the institutional and policy changes

introduced in the course of EU accession. In other words, the question that remains open is how

supra-national integration has played itself out not only in policy changes affecting minorities

but also in changes in the political integration of minorities. In the scholarship about minority

integration, political integration is usually defined as part of structural integration, which means

participation in the full range of institutions available in a state, including economic, social,

cultural, educational, as well as political institutions. In this paper, by political integration I

mean the way minorities make use of the common polity by participating in the democratic

process—the way they ―voice‖ preferences, make use of the available institutions, participate in

shaping new forms of representation and participation, carve out new institutions, use alternative

forms of political mobilization and activism;2 and whether they avoid or ―exit‖ the democratic

process in greater numbers than members of state majorities.3

2 Comparative work on the impact of EU accession on changes in minority mobilization appeared in a

special issue of the Romanian Journal of Political Science edited by Dia Anagnostou and Anna

Triandafyllidou, Spring 2007. 3 The expressions ―voice‖ and ―exit‖ in the context of political participation originate from Hirschman,

1970, and have been employed by others in relation to minorities in CEE, see for instance Commersio

2004. For a discussion about differences in voice and representation, see Alonzo and Luiz-Rufino,

Shared institutional constraints: “Tamed” minorities, limited agency

In an important respect, minorities in EU accession states are comparatively well

integrated into the democratic framework. Although comparative studies confirm that competing

understandings of democracy exist in post-communist societies, and there is strong evidence of

continuing majority-minority tensions over key issues of the social contract throughout CEE,

such tensions have rarely manifested themselves outside the framework of democratic

contestation. In this sense, democracy has indeed become ―the only game in town‖ in new EU

accession states.4 Given the number of sizable minorities in CEE, most of which have kin-states

in the region (Csergo and Goldgeier 2004; Saideman and Ayres 2008; Waterbury 2008),

minorities in CEE have presented only moderate claims for language rights, institutional

autonomy, and socio-economic integration. This outcome is especially noteworthy if we

compare these cases to democratic societies in the Western hemisphere, such as in Canada or in

older member states of the EU, including Spain and the United Kingdom, where minority

populations of similar characteristics have pursued more substantive institutional demands (such

as federative arrangements) more forcefully (sometimes even through violence).

It is also the case, however, that minorities in the new European democracies found

themselves in a situation of strong structural asymmetry that was reinforced at both state and

international levels, and limited their agency in designing the institutions of the new democratic

polity.5 The significance of state institutions in shaping minority activism, including the

articulation of claims and patterns of mobilization, is acknowledged in the scholarship.

(Horowitz 1985; Snyder 2000; Hechter and Okamoto 2001; Henry Hale, 2008) The dominant

―Political Representation and Ethnic Conflict in New Democracies‖ European Journal of Political

Research 46 (2007): 237-238. For a theoretical discussion about organizational forms of minority

representation, see Peter Vermeersch, ―Along Ethnic Lines: Minority Organizations in Europe and the

Limits and Opportunities of Institutional Representation,‖ paper presented at the Annual Convention of

the Association for the Study of Nationalities, April 23-25, 2007, Columbia University, New York. 4 This widely cited definition of consolidated democracy comes from Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stefan,

Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-

Communist Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996):5 5 For an account of the way differences in state development shaped East-West differences in majorities‘

sense of territorial ―ownership,‖ see Liebich 2002. East-West differences in patterns of minority

accommodation have also been observed by Keating 2008.

state structure in CEE is the unitary nation-state, and in the overwhelming majority of cases

titular majorities have used this model to assert ownership over institutions of government and to

control minorities residing within the borders of the state. A complete absence of federalism or

territorial autonomy in the region demonstrates this pattern, and the weakness of decentralization

in these states further constrains minority efforts to reproduce their own cultures.6

After the dismemberment of all three communist federations, it is hardly puzzling that

state majorities in post-communist states opted for unitary state structures. (Bunce 1999; Roeder

2007) It is more puzzling that ―EU conditionality,‖ which elevated minority protection to the

level of a significant European norm for the first time since the beginnings of the organization,

has helped reinforce the state- and national security-centered paradigm. An influential

expectation in the scholarship has been that the EU should help ―de-securitize‖ minority rights in

the region, and de-securitization in turn should allow for the expansion of minority

accommodation and pluralism (Kymlicka 2007). The politics of the EU‘s ―Eastern

Enlargement,‖ however, was firmly grounded in the understanding that the stability needs of

member states trumped minority desires for greater accommodation. (Sasse 2005, Feldman

2003) In this framework, national majorities in each state remain in charge of deciding over the

appropriateness of institutions and policies they design for minority populations.

The Eastern Enlargement project highlighted the tension between the supranational norm

of minority protection on the one hand and states‘ sovereignty over matters of national

reproduction on the other, in ways that had not been apparent during the previous waves of EU

expansion. European institutions, though prepared to mandate the specific terms of major

institutional changes in candidate states in other areas, rarely recommended specific minority-

friendly policies to these states beyond the norms of peaceful negotiation, consensus, and

accommodation. In other words, the primary interest at the European level was in encouraging

moderation. It appears plausible to argue that the accession process, by applying a security-

centered approach to minority claims, has helped to reinforce the structural asymmetry between

titular majorities and minorities in the region.

6 Freedom House‘s ―Nations in Transit‖ has traced these states‘ decentralization patterns between 1999

and 2008, see the ―Local democratic governance ratings‖ at

http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=434&year=2008. Accessed on August 2, 2009

The question immediately arises to what extent we should attempt to derive arguments of

broader comparative validity from a region where both supra-national (EU-level) and sub-state

institutions create strong constraints on the agency of minority actors. Would, for instance, a

majority-minority frame of analysis be useful in understanding political integration in states

where multiple group categories coexist but no clear majorities have emerged that would ―own‖

the process of establishing and maintaining institutions? In all of the CEE cases where both the

state and the democratic regime are consolidated, there is one identifiable national majority. In

the few cases where no clearly identifiable majority has emerged, such as Bosnia-Herzegovina

and Moldova, both state and democracy remain fragile.

Although the majority-minority framework is seemingly ―over-determined‖ in

democratized CEE, this region can still provide valuable lessons for places where the nation-state

prevails either as an existing institution or as a desired model. It appears that, even under a

supra-national integrative framework, nation-states continue to empower existing national

majorities. It also appears plausible to expect that nation-states will continue to engender

national majorities in societies where no clear majorities exist.7 Power asymmetry becomes

especially meaningful for minorities at a time of regime change, when new institutions are

established. Comparative evidence suggests that majority elites in charge of building a new state

or ―re-constructing‖ a state (such as in the Baltic region) are more likely to adopt exclusive

policies than those whose aim is to maintain and consolidate an existing state. (Csergo 2007)

Nonetheless, the dominant pattern throughout CEE has been that state-building and state-

maintaining majorities alike have had a strong tendency to exclude minorities from the process

of institutionalizing the new regime and establishing the terms of a new ―social contract.‖

Despite significant similarities in institutional opportunity structures both at the level of

EU norms and that of the unitary nation-state model, however, comparative exploration reveals

significant differences in the way minorities in the ―EU accession zone‖ have made use of the

institutions of democratic contestation. Among minority populations of similar size, for

instance, some have established and consistently supported ethnic parties and participated

regularly in electoral and legislative politics at all levels of government. In other cases, minority

electorates have shown remarkably weak interest in minority parties, although they have voiced

7 About the homogenization strategies of Western European democracies, see Joppke 2004 and 2007.

separate (minority) interest by other means, for example through public demonstrations.

Similarly, some minority electorates are just as active in parliamentary elections as members of

the ―titular‖ majority electorates, while others have been characterized by disproportionate

apathy. (Stein 2000; Ishiyama 2000, 2001; Alonso and Luiz-Rufino 2007)

To explore the question of whether historic/territorial and non-historic/territorial

minorities differ in the way they make use of the means of democratic competition, I included in

this study four new EU member states from CEE: Romania and Slovakia (with historic

Hungarian minorities); and Estonia and Lithuania (with Russian-speakers that are viewed as

recent settlers in both states8 and a historic Polish minority in Lithuania).

9

The comparative study of minorities assumes that recognizable and comparable

minorities exist in states, which invariably raises the question of whether it is appropriate to

employ group categories in a study of identity-based political competition. An influential school

in nationalism and ethnicity studies rejects ―group‖ as a useful analytical category, arguing that

scholars who use group labels contribute to the reification of groups. Especially if their

normative preference is for an integrated political community of equal citizens, scholars should

not be in the business of group-making. (Brubaker 2004; Csergo 2008) Yet in the comparative

scholarship about political cleavages, group categories are useful in capturing recognizable and

systematically manifested positions and preferences. In most societies, only a limited number of

minority groups become politically salient by making claims to the state or becoming targets of

minority policy, and those groups demonstrate as much coherence and continuity in their

behavior as can be accepted of social categories in general. Majority and minority groups are

never unitary, but they demonstrate recognizable patterns of emerging political unity and

fragmentation—a better understanding of which is necessary if we want to make sense of

political integration.

8 There is a historic Russian minority around Lake Peipsi and a historic Russian community called ―Old

Believers‖ in Lithuania. 9 Roma populations, as non-territorial minorities that have inhabited this region for centuries, also

constitute an important comparative case in the framework of the larger research project. Roma

minorities are politically weak in comparison to the other minorities included in the study. Roma became

targets of minority policy primarily as a result of external pressure, in the framework of EU

conditionality. (Ligeois and Gheorghe 1995; Crowe 1999 and 2008; European Roma Rights Center 2001

and 2003; Barany 1998, 2002, 2004; Fox 2001; Klimova 2002; Ram 2009; Vermeersch 2003, 2006, and

2009; Vermeersch and Ram 2009; Emiryan 2009)

Historic “homeland” minorities in Romania and Slovakia10

In both Romania and Slovakia, both majority and minority populations claim historic homeland

rights. The dominant political elites in charge of establishing the institutions of the new

democratic polity at the beginning of the 1990s were majority nationalists who chose the unitary

nation-state model and pursued majority control over the institutions of government. As the

majority nationalist elites in power excluded from the process of institutional design not only the

minorities but also the majority parties that represented different approaches to regime change,

the Hungarian minority parties found opportunities to negotiate strategic electoral alliances with

majority parties in opposition. These alliances established minority parties as integral parts of

the political community, and Hungarians in both states have remained fully engaged in the

democratic process since then. (Csergo 2002; Mihailescu 2008)

In both cases, historic Hungarian minorities constituted the politically most salient

minority groups at the beginning of democratization. Hungarians made up approximately 7% of

the population in Romania and 11% in Slovakia. (Since then, the ratio of Hungarians has

decreased in both countries, to 6.6% in Romania in 2002 and 9.7% in Slovakia in 2001, see

Csergo 2007: 155; 157) The majority of Hungarians live in territorially concentrated areas in

both states (in Slovakia, in the southern region along the Hungarian state border; in Romania, in

the Transylvanian region, concentrated especially in the historic Sekler region). Language use

emerged as the touchstone of majority-minority conflict from the beginning of democratization,

as national majorities in these states sought to establish exclusive ownership of the territory by

marking the institutions of the state—including both physical spaces (place names and public

signs) and public institutions (such as public administration, legislation, the judiciary, and the

military)—in the majority language. Linguistic territoriality, which is the expectation that the

national space would be mapped by the national language, became a powerful motivation for

both majority and minority political parties. (Csergo 2007)

In both cases, the same three clusters of preferences emerged about the ordering of

languages in the public sphere: language dominance, language predominance, and language

parity. Language dominance, which means that a single language becomes the exclusive official

10

The discussion of the Romanian and Slovak cases relies on more detailed analysis in Zsuzsa Csergo,

Talk of the Nation: Language and Conflict in Romania and Slovakia. Cornell University Press, 2007

language in public institutions, was the preferred option of majority nationalist elites in both

countries, who formed governing coalitions and controlled the processes of institutionalization in

the first period of regime change (from 1990 to 1996 in Romania and from 1992 to 1998 in

Slovakia). These majority elites adopted a series of policies that excluded minority languages

from public institutions and introduced policies of language shift in the educational system.

Hungarian minorities vehemently contested these policies and demanded language parity, which

meant the coequal status of languages, or official bilingualism, at local and regional levels where

the minority represented a significant percentage of the population. Moderate Romanian and

Slovak parties that cooperated with the Hungarian parties preferred majority language

predominance in public institutions, which meant that majority speakers would not be compelled

to learn the minority language in any part of the state, but minority speakers would be allowed to

use their language in certain public institutions.

State formation rendered majority elites in Slovakia more interested than their Romanian

counterparts in the exclusion of the minority language from the official domain. By contrast,

Romanian majority elites who pursued nationalizing policies within unchanged state boundaries

were more willing to accommodate minority demands. Despite these differences, majority

nation-building engendered similar patterns of political unity among Hungarians in the two

states. In Romania, one major ―umbrella‖ political party, the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians

in Romania (DAHR), managed to obtain the overwhelming support of Hungarian voters in every

parliamentary election since 1990. After the 1996 parliamentary elections, this party became

part of a governing coalition formed by its former allies in the parliamentary opposition, and was

able to negotiate policies of increased minority accommodation in the domain of language rights,

which were introduced gradually after 1997 in the educational system, local government, and the

courts. (Kántor and Bárdi 2002, Medianu 2002, Kiss 2009) The DAHR has been increasingly

challenged by competing Hungarian parties since 2004, and some analysts had predicted that the

fragmentation of the Hungarian electorate could prevent it from reaching the 5% minimum

threshold in the 2008 parliamentary elections. Changes in the Romanian electoral law coupled

with the continued support of its constituency helped the DAHR to compete successfully in those

elections (Kiss 2009), and fear from the political consequences of fragmentation compelled

Hungarian minority leaders to engage in increased cooperation in 2009.

In Slovakia, the process of increased minority unity in response to fear from exclusion

from the parliament unfolded differently but followed a similar logic of majority-minority

competition. Hungarians formed four political parties at the beginning of democratization. In

response to the majority nationalist coalition government‘s policies of minority exclusion,

however, these parties formed electoral alliances in 1992 and 1994 (in response to amendments

to the electoral law that raised the minimum threshold for alliances), until they finally merged

into one political party, the Hungarian Coalition Party (HCP) that was able to maintain the

overwhelming support of the Hungarian minority electorate in subsequent parliamentary

elections. Similarly to DAHR in Romania, the HCP became part of the governing coalition

formed by their former allies in the opposition after the 1998 elections. (Meseznikov, 1999) In

preparation of EU membership, Slovak majority parties demonstrated interest in consensual

relations and moved in a direction of increased minority accommodation after 1999. In the

second part of the 2000s, however, as majority nationalist elites returned to power in a new

coalition, confrontational relationship with Hungarian minority elites also returned. A set of

restrictive amendments to the language law adopted in June 2009 raised serious questions about

the future of minority accommodation in the state, triggering immediate opposition by Hungarian

minority organizations.11

The Hungarian Coalition Party has called for a large peaceful public

event to be held on September 1, 2009, titled ―We Stand Up for Our Rights‖ [In Hungarian,

―KIÁLLUNK A JOGAINKÉRT‖]. The call for participation posted on the party‘s website

includes a request for moderation, and the preliminary program indicates the participation of a

large spectrum of Hungarian minority organizations from Slovakia.12

The pattern described above indicates that Hungarian minority electorates in both

Romania and Slovakia, although otherwise representing a wide range of interests and

preferences, favor minority political unity over fragmentation—if fragmentation comes at the

cost of exclusion from rights considered fundamental to cultural reproduction or from

participation in the state parliament and potentially in governmental decision-making. The EU

11

European Bureau of Lesser Used Languages, ―Opposition Mounts to Slovakia‘s Language Law,‖

Wednesday, July 22, 2009.

http://www.eblul.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=225&Itemid=1

Accessed on July 22, 2009. 12

http://www.mkp.sk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2060&Itemid=2

Accessed on August 21, 2009.

accession process represented a significant incentive for majority-minority cooperation in both

Romania and Slovakia. In both states, the inclusion of the Hungarian minority party in coalition

governments formed by integrationist majority parties was the outcome of EU pressure for

increased minority accommodation. Even before their inclusion in governing coalitions,

however, the Hungarian parties had taken full advantage of the democratic process since the

beginning of democratization. They articulated positions and negotiated agreements with

majority parties in the opposition, and these agreements led to policy changes when the former

opposition parties were brought to power. The issue that remains highly divisive in both cases is

Hungarian minority demand for territorial self-governance in the minority‘s historic region—

which majorities are unwilling to consider in either state. With respect to Slovakia, the 2009

language law amendments trigger minority fears that policies of accommodation can be rolled

back in the post-accession period, once ―EU conditionality‖ no longer constrains majority

decision-makers. At the present time, however, members of the Hungarian minority continue to

participate in the full spectrum of democratic competition.

A territorialized “settler” minority in Estonia

Historical inheritance played a prominent role in institutionalizing the post-Soviet Baltic states of

Estonia and Lithuania. Majorities viewed the establishment of the state as a ―restoration,‖ a

project to which only those who had held ownership rights to the interwar Estonian state were

entitled. In the eyes of the state-reconstituting majorities, the great majority of Russian-speakers

were alien settlers who moved into these national territories after their illegal occupation by the

Soviet Union in 1940. In both cases, the ―titular‖ majorities of the ―restored‖ states were

engaged in simultaneous processes of nation-building, democratization, and Europeanization.

Yet there were significant differences in the willingness of majorities to make institutional

spaces available for minorities in the two states. A brief comparison of the Estonian and

Lithuanian cases highlights the variation.

The single politically salient minority population in Estonia at the time of independence

was the Russian-speaking minority, which comprised over 30% of the state‘s population in 1989.

The great majority of Russians live in concentrated areas in the north-east region of the country,

such as the industrial areas of Narva and Sillamae. The categorization of Russian-speakers as

settlers (rather than minorities) served as a rationale for the exclusion of the majority of this

population from citizenship. The 1992 citizenship law, which restored the 1938 Citizenship Law

and combined ius sanguinis with the principle of legal continuity, disenfranchised roughly 40%

of the state‘s 1.5 million population. Only those who held Estonian citizenship before June 16,

1940 and their descendents could claim automatic citizenship. For the large majority of

Estonia‘s other residents, naturalization would require serious effort, including two exams that

tested applicants‘ language proficiency in Estonian and their knowledge about Estonia‘s

constitution and citizenship act. At the time of independence, only between 9-15% of the

Russophone population spoke Estonian, and the failure rate of the language exam was around

40%. (Budryte 2005: 7, 87) A restrictive quota system served as an additional obstacle to the

naturalization of Russian-speakers, denying residency to certain categories of people (such as

families associated with the former KGB and military forces).

Citizenship serves as an important resource in democratic states, and European

institutions became particularly active in pressuring the Estonian government to liberalize its

naturalization policies and treat Russians as legitimate minority populations. Despite the

pressure of ―EU conditionality,‖ however, the citizenship and language legislation adopted in the

years that followed (especially the 1993 Law on Aliens and language and citizenship legislation

in 1995) introduced additional instruments for restricting the naturalization of Russian-speakers.

It appeared as though the Estonian government had pursued an unspoken agenda to encourage

the outmigration of Russian-speakers. (Outmigration increased steadily until the mid-1990s and

dropped off toward the end of the decade. Budryte 2005: 73) The government‘s efforts shifted to

policies of minority integration only when Estonia was compelled to increase naturalization rates

in order to stay on track for EU accession. Since 1997, amendments to the citizenship law have

made it possible for stateless children and youth, as well as spouses of citizens, to ―jump the

quota line‖ for naturalization. When Estonia joined the EU in 2004, the institutions of the

Estonian state had been established and consolidated without any meaningful participation of the

Russian minority. Although naturalization was easier to obtain at the time of EU accession, a

sizable ratio of Estonia‘s population (12%) was still stateless. By April 2008, non-citizens

constituted 8% and citizens of other states (primarily of the Russian Federation) made up another

8.9% of the population (TIES 2008: 58)

Positive changes in naturalization undoubtedly count among the successes of ―EU

conditionality‖ in Estonia. Naturalization ratios, however, can serve as only weak indicators of

minority integration. The question remains whether the increased availability of citizenship has

led to changes in the way Russians make use of Estonia‘s democratic institutions. Although

research on the political participation of Russians is scarce, analyses of Estonia‘s minority

integration project provide some evidence for emerging patterns of integration.

Estonia launched an official state integration program in 2000, responding to explicit

pressure by European officials and demands by moderate Estonian officials and Russian-

speaking politicians in Estonia. Feldman highlights the linguistic-assimilationist scope of this

integration program:

‗A strong common core‘ is to be based upon the use of the Estonian language in the

public sphere. The Estonian language is the tool by which society is to be united lest

ethnic relations become dangerous; in other words, public life is to be ordered through

the use of the Estonian language.9 Hence, 81% of the 2000 budget for the State

Programme was committed to teaching the Estonian language to Russian-speakers.

(Feldman 2003:230)

Already the 1995 education reform declared Estonian as the official language of

instruction throughout Estonia‘s school system and set the year 2000 as an ambitious target by

which all schools would shift to Estonian-language instruction. In 1997, the deadline was

revised to 2008. (TIES 2008: 170-172) To achieve the desired language shift among the

Russian population, the project introduced majority language immersion in the early years of

education, majority language predominance in upper levels, and it made higher education

available only in the majority language. The logic of this policy appears remarkably similar to

the strategy of ―linguistic territorialism‖ described in relation to Romania and Slovakia, both in

the steps by which language shift is introduced and its substantive elements. The 2007 education

reform calls for Russian-language secondary schools to shift the language of instruction in 60%

of studies, requiring that the following subjects be taught exclusively in the Estonian language:

Estonian Literature, Civic Education, Music, Estonian History, and Geography (TIES 2008: 59).

Clearly, these subjects are considered as key to socializing students into a common Estonian

―national canon.‖ Except for Music, the same subjects appeared also on the list of Romanian and

Slovak majority nationalizing projects, and the requirement to teach history and geography

exclusively in the majority language became a particularly divisive source of majority-minority

debate. (Csergo 1007)

Russians in Estonia have been similarly concerned about the exclusion of their language

from public institutions and especially from the educational system and, as the April 2007

Bronze Soldier riots demonstrated, also about the imposition of an Estonian national canon in the

teaching of history and about a perceived intention to erase the physical representation of

Russian identity in Estonia. According to others, including some Estonian intellectuals, the

event demonstrated that majority decision-makers were uninterested in minority members about

decisions that directly affected them. (Galbreath 2005)

Given the poor record of Russian-language schools in graduating students competent in

the state language, a growing number of parents send their children to Estonian-language

schools, demonstrating what one author calls a strong ―instrumental desire‖ for their children to

learn Estonian and thereby increase their education and job opportunities. (Rannut 2008: 160-

161) Yet the growing choice for bilingualism is coupled with continuing interest in maintaining

the Russian language as their primary language of communication, and a majority of Russian-

speakers continues to turn to Russian-language sources for information. (Budryte 2005)

Among the younger generation of Estonia‘s population, by contrast, a situation of

majority language predominance is emerging. Although Russians are more likely to live in

ethnically segregated neighborhoods than Estonians, majority-language proficiency among

Russians is increasing among the younger generation, while Russian language proficiency

among young Estonians is decreasing. A growing expectation that public institutions and spaces

should be marked by the Estonian language has important implications for minority integration.

Differences in the popular acceptance of multilingualism reveal an increasing sense of

―ownership‖ among Estonians, and younger Estonians are more likely than the older generation

to identify relations between the two language groups as unfriendly (TIES 2008, pp.84-85).

Russians are more likely to accept multiculturalism than Estonians. (TIES 2008: 63-67) Despite

the government‘s emphasis on integration as a ―two-way street,‖ there is little indication of a

growing interest among the Estonian majority (elites and publics) in the greater inclusion of

Russians in the democratic process. Although Russians face obvious disadvantages in the public

sector and the sphere of politics, recent public opinion surveys suggest that Estonians find it

difficult to allow Russians to make use of the institutions of the Estonian state under equal terms.

In a 2007 survey, for instance, only 28% of Estonians (in contrast to 82% of people of other

nationalities) agreed that greater participation of other nationalities in economic and political

affairs would be beneficial for Estonia. (TIES 2008: 24)

Russians in Estonia have been significantly less politically integrated and resourceful

than the Hungarian minorities in Romania and Slovakia. The 1993 Law on Aliens, which

included additional obstacles to naturalization in Estonia and first introduced the policy of

language shift, triggered significant contestation, including referenda on territorial autonomy for

the Russophone regions. Although large majorities supported these referenda in the Russian-

majority regions of Narva and Sillamae, the government had no intention to negotiate any

changes in minority policy with the Russian minority. (Galbreath 2005: 161-166)

European institutions have remained actively involved in Estonia‘s integration project (by

funding both the state integration program and the ongoing research about its results) and have

supported education reform that affected minority education. Yet they have been largely

ineffective in pressuring the Estonian government to adopt more accommodative minority

policies, except for the adoption of anti-discrimination legislation. Feldman argues that, in the

absence of a coherent European position on policies of linguistic assimilation, Estonian state

elites can find support for their language strategy among state elites in other EU member states

and can resist any pressure from the OSCE. Thus, the integration program ―helps to marginalize

national minority societies in Estonia institutionally from the transnational processes of nation-

state consolidation.‖ (Feldman 2003: 224)

The institutional resources available to Russians to resist the policy of language shift in

the long term are similarly scarce at the local level. Russians continue to use their language in

the private sphere, and members of the younger generation increasingly value bilingualism.

Efforts to maintain official language parity at the local level, in schools and public institutions in

settlements with sizable Russian-speaking populations, have been largely unsuccessful. One of

the reasons why Russians were highly critical of the 1993 Law on Cultural Autonomy for

National Minorities was that this legislation did not recognize a link between cultural autonomy

and the education system. (Martynova 1999: 98-100)

The absence of voting rights for a great majority of Russian adults in the first two

decades of democratization has been an obvious reason for the weakness of political integration

in Estonia. Non-citizens in Estonia were not eligible to join political parties, vote in national

elections, and run for office even at the local level (although they could vote in local elections).

Even as Russians became citizens in greater numbers, however, they have neither formed

political parties capable of representing their interests in parliament nor became effective in

cross-ethnic parties.

It is plausible that initial political marginalization deprived Russians from the hopes that

they might be able to affect change through democratic institutions. The question arises why

Russians did not choose other, perhaps violent, forms of mobilization, voicing discontent outside

the channels of democracy, as comparative research would lead us to expect. (Gurr 1993) The

April 2007 Bronze Soldier riots indicated a potential for violent response on the part of the

Russians. (Galbreath‘s 2008) Given the difficulties that Russians in Estonia experienced after

the collapse of the Soviet Union, then, the relative weakness of protest during the first two

decades of post-Soviet transformation is puzzling. Compared to members of the titular majority,

Russians in Estonia experienced greater uncertainty and decline during the period of transition in

all areas of life, including economic well-being, access to jobs, and participation in public life.

(TIES 2008:3) Even the more radical Russian nationalists were non-violent, only a small

minority was in favor of continued Soviet control over the republic (the majority supported either

greater autonomy for Estonia within the Soviet Union or Estonian independence). Already in

1990, there appeared to be a broad recognition among the Russians that Estonians had a right to

self-government, especially as Russians in Estonia enjoyed a higher standard of living than their

kin in Russia, and those in favor of Estonian independence were looking for a more inclusive

state than what materialized after independence.

Acceptance of Estonian independence, however, does not easily explain the continued

political marginalization of Russians, given their growing interest in official bilingualism in

public institutions. Although Russians formed a variety of organizations (Martynova 1999: 96),

there is broad agreement in the scholarship that their political activism has been weak and

fragmented. Galbraith talks about ―a general malaise and apathy‖ among the Russians, which

defies expectations of a united ethnic front in the face of marginalization. (Galbreath 2008: 116-

119)

One plausible explanation for the absence of mobilization is that the citizenship policy,

which quickly granted citizenship to approximately 80,000 Russian-speakers, including

prominent pro-independence political elites, while disenfranchising the rest of the Russian-

speaking minority, created divisions not so much between the majority population and the

Russian minority but within the Russian population. The most visible initial division was

between what Melvin calls the ―Soviet-Russian‖ camp represented by Inter-movement and the

―Baltic-Russian‖ camp represented by those who supported independence. It appeared, however,

that most Russophones had difficulty identifying with either camp. (Melvin 2000) Neither the

(pro-Moscow) Russian Party of Estonia nor the (integrationist) Estonian United People‘s Party

succeeded in garnering the necessary votes to enter parliament. They also failed to form a

successful strategic electoral coalition, even during the time of particularly restrictive minority

policy. In 1995, when the government increased exclusionary citizenship and language

legislation, Russian parties united under the banner of ―Our Home is Estonia.‖ The alliance,

however, could not consolidate and mobilize electoral support, and the performance of Russian

parties continued to decline toward the end of the decade, as the majority of the Russian

electorate gave their support to mainstream Estonian parties, especially the Centre Party.

(Budryte 2005: 76-77) Under the leadership of Edgar Savisaar, this party has been successful in

gaining Russian votes since 1991 (Vihalemm 2007:483) The relative success of mainstream

parties in attracting Russian votes, however, does not mean that Russians used these parties

effectively to articulate and negotiate demands. Levels of political engagement have been

significantly lower among Russians than among the majority population (State Integration

Programme 2006: 27-28). The differences are only partly explained by restrictions on

citizenship.

Scholars explore the possibility that participation in the political sphere, especially at the

state level, is simply not as desirable to Russians in an Estonian nation-building project that

provides little incentive to majority parties to cooperate with Russian minority parties. Instead of

wasting their efforts in state-level political competition, Russians focused on local elections, as

local competition provided Russians with a stronger sense of effectiveness (especially as non-

citizen residents were eligible to vote in local elections even if they could not run for office)

(Vihalemm 2007: 483). Russians were indeed able to achieve a relatively high degree of

representation in local governments. Yet even there, candidates of mainstream integrationist

Estonian parties (especially the Centre Party) emerged as more attractive to Russian-speaking

voters than Russian candidates representing minority nationalist positions.

Another explanation highlights the significance among Russians of the freedom to

engage in economic activities and compete successfully in the economic sphere, which has

helped maintain majority-minority peace since 1991, despite the exclusion of a large segment of

the Russian minority from political opportunities. (Commercio 2008) Surveys indicate, however,

that Russians continue to be significantly disadvantaged also in the economic sphere, especially

in the public sector, in senior and managerial positions, and generally their access to

employment, particularly in professional jobs requiring higher skills, and even amongst Russian-

speakers who have attained citizenship. (De Varennes 1999: 134-139; TIES 2008:24)

A comparison with Lithuania, where Russians were granted citizenship rights, suggests

that Russian minorities in both of these states were less politically resourceful than their historic

minority counterparts in the Baltics and elsewhere in the region.

Historic and “Settler” minorities in Lithuania

Lithuania adopted a more liberal approach to minority integration than the other two

Baltic states, including the ―zero-option‖ citizenship policy, which privileged those Lithuanians

who had inherited rights to the state (granting automatic citizenship only to those born in

Lithuania, and those who held citizenship before 1940 and their descendants, including second-

or third-generation descendents of Lithuanians living abroad), but allowed long-time residents

who had moved to Lithuania after 1940 as Soviet citizens relatively easy access to citizenship.

They had to prove ten years of residency, renounce any other citizenship (something that

members of the Lithuanian diaspora abroad did not have to do in order to obtain citizenship), and

demonstrate competence in the Lithuanian language. The language exam, however, was not as

difficult as equivalent exams in Estonia and Latvia, and Lithuanias did not set restrictive quotas

on naturalization. (Bulajeva and Hogan-Brun 2008)

There is broad agreement in the scholarship that Lithuanian elites adopted a more liberal

policy because they ―could afford it:‖ Lithuanians comprised the overwhelming majority of the

state and had fewer reasons to fear minority challenge to the state. Scholars also point out that

Lithuanians claimed a longer history of statehood and nourished myths about the tolerant

character of the medieval Lithuanian polity. Another component of the explanation is that the

Lithuanian citizenship law was an outcome of a compromise between Lithuanian nationalists

(the so-called Sajudis nationalists, who preferred a citizenship law similar to that adopted in

Estonia and Latvia) and the Lithuanian Communist party (which included a large number of

Russian-speakers)—a compromise that could not have been imaginable in the other two Baltic

states, where Communists were squarely associated with illegitimate Soviet occupation and held

no legitimacy in the eyes of the majority population. Due to the smaller size of the Russophone

population in the Lithuanian republic during the Soviet period, the Lithuanians had a more

indigenous Communist Party (Budryte 2005: p.151) , which in turn rendered reform-minded

Communists some nationalist credentials on which to capitalize when they advanced a more

moderate position on the citizenship law. Although Lithuanian society appeared more divided

politically than Estonia and Latvia were, the political cleavage in Lithuania was less

―ethnicized.‖ (Duvold and Jurkynas 2004: 143) Against this backdrop, it was less risky for the

Lithuanian government to adopt a more minority-friendly strategy, including efforts to reassure

minorities already on the day after declaring independence in March, and greater willingness to

respond to European pressures to treat Russian-speakers as a legitimate minority population.

The government established a minority Council that later became the Department of

Nationalities and, under specific EU guidelines, the office of an ombudsman to hear minority

complaints.

Lithuanian elites opted for a more moderate approach also to the use of language as an

instrument of nation-building. While Estonian language legislation extended the dominance of

the majority language to all domains of public life, including business transactions outside of the

state domain, Lithuanian language legislation was more flexible, with lower degrees of majority

language competence required in the public and semi-public sector than in the other two Baltic

states. (Bulajeva and Hogan-Brun 2008)

Given these differences in minority policy, it would be plausible to expect Russian-

speakers to be more integrated into the Lithuanian polity than their counterparts in Estonia,

especially if integration means the degree to which minorities make use of available institutions

and gain equal ownership over them. Drawing on comparative work in this area, Hechter and

Okamoto claim that, ―More generally, immigrants who are granted legal status, the prospect of

citizenship, and resettlement assistance by the host community will assimilate more rapidly, both

economically and in their social and psychological integration‖ (p.199). Evidence suggests that

Russians in Lithuania are somewhat more integrated than Russians in Estonia, but they appear to

be politically less resourceful than the Polish minority.

With a Russian-speaking population of approximately 9% and a Polish minority of ca

7%, Lithuania encompassed two politically salient minorities at the time of independence: a

Russian-speaking minority that, similarly to Russians in Estonia and Latvia, was considered a

settler population and a historic Polish minority of roughly similar size. Although most Russian

residents of Lithuania were able to obtain citizenship without difficulty, outmigration patterns

(primarily to the Russian Federation) were similar to those in Estonia, suggesting that citizenship

policy may not have been the primary factor in the process. From 1991 to 2009, the number of

Russian-speakers decreased from around 9% to around 6.3%, making the Russian and Polish

minorities even more comparable in terms of size (the Polish minority decreased from 7% to

6.7% during the same period). Both of these minorities are territorially relatively concentrated.

Most of the Russians live in urban areas (for instance, they represent a majority in Vilnius),

while the Poles constitute a historic territorial minority in the south-east region of Lithuania, a

region that used to be part of the interwar Polish state.

Similarly to Estonia, minorities are even less likely to participate in elections and less

satisfied with the political system than the average Lithuanian citizen. (Duvold and Jurkynas

2004: 158-160; Krasatkina and Beresneviciute 2006: 31-32) Since the minimum threshold was

increased to 5% for all political parties competing in parliamentary elections, minority parties

have been unable to enter parliament. (Minorities have gained parliamentary seats as part of

cross-ethnic electoral alliances and representatives of single member districts.) (Duvold and

Jurkynas 2004: 148-149) Similarly to Estonia, minorities have been more proportionately

represented in local government.

The Polish minority has been more assertive than the Russian-speakers, presenting a

more coherent challenge to a Lithuanian unitary nation-state design. The Polish Union

(predecessor of the Lithuanian Poles‘ Electoral Action) was the first party formed in preparation

of free elections in Lithuania. (Krasatkina and Beresneviciute 2006:38-43) Taking advantage of

the lower minimum threshold for minority parties, the Polish Union garnered the necessary votes

to enter Lithuania‘s first parliament, enabling Polish minority elites to articulate claims and

negotiate more directly with mainstream parties after independence. In the process, they reached

consensus on some divisive issues concerning language rights in education and local

government. Russian parties, by contrast, missed the opportunity provided by the initial

minority-friendly electoral law to organize into a politically more influential party. Similarly to

Estonia, the organizational life of the Russian minority has been much more fragmented than that

of the Hungarians in Romania and Slovakia. The majority of the Russian minority electorate

supports mainstream leftist parties, primarily the Democratic Labour Party (LDLP) which is the

successor of the former Communist Party, and is more willing to put minority candidates on its

list. The Union of Lithuanian Russians has had weak electoral performance. The Russian

Alliance Union, formed in 2002, participated only in local elections. (Krasatkina and

Beresneciviute 2006:38-43). Polish parties, by contrast, have regularly gained the overwhelming

majority of Polish votes in both state- and local-level elections.

Socio-economic differences provide only a weak explanation for the differences between

Lithuania‘s two politically salient minority groups. Unemployment is generally higher among

both of these minorities than among the majority population. Educational levels are higher than

average among Russians and lower among Poles, reflecting differences between urban and rural

areas. (Krasatkina and Beresneviciute 2006) Poles are on the average both more competent in

the Lithuanian language than Russians and more active politically and more intent on securing

their own schools and cultural institutions. Poles also appear more interested in maintaining a

distinctive identity by sending their children to Polish-language schools and making and

maintaining their own cultural institutions. Russian parents are more likely to send their children

to Lithuanian-language schools, in the hopes that they acquire the language skills necessary to

gain admission to institutions of higher education. The share of Russian students educated in

Lithuanian-language schools has increased significantly since 1991, while the ratio has remained

relatively stable among Poles. At the same time, Russian as a second language remains a

popular choice among Lithuanians (Bulejova and Hogan-Brun 2008:131-142). (By comparison,

research found a steady decrease in the appeal of Russian as a second language among Estonian

youth.)

These patterns suggest that, in comparison with Estonia, Lithuanians have achieved a

higher degree of majority-minority integration through more liberal policies, which reinforced

not only a broadly shared acceptance of majority language predominance among minorities but

also a greater willingness among the Lithuanian majority to accept the idea of ―two-way‖

bilingualism. The latter may have more to do with the value of the Russian language as a

regional lingua franca (Polish does not feature among Lithuanians‘ top second language

choices), but nonetheless suggests a lower degree of majority-minority alienation.

Conclusion

This paper proposes a definition of political integration that focuses on the way minorities use

political resources to negotiate claims in the framework of democratic contestation. In the CEE

countries that have joined the EU since 2004 consolidated democracies, significant variation

emerged in this respect, despite considerable limitations on the agency of minority actors in

shaping the institutions of the new polities. On the one hand, minorities in the ―EU accession

zone‖ found themselves in a situation of strong structural asymmetry that was reinforced at both

state and transnational levels. The homogenizing nation-state emerged as the preferred state

model throughout the region, as ―titular‖ majorities designed policies to assert ownership over

public institutions. Large segments of minority populations resented majority nationalizing

strategies, especially the policies of linguistic assimilation. On the other hand, some minority

groups in the region were able to use the democratic process more effectively than others to

negotiate policy changes that led to increasing pluralism.

A comparison of four EU accession states that encompass historic and non-historic

minorities suggests that the notion of inherited institutions, which constitutes a consistent

principle shaping European norm and practice in majority-minority relations, remains a

significant source of political action for both majority and minority groups. For majorities, this

principle played the most prominent role in the Baltic state where titular groups engaged in state

―restoration‖ based on ownership rights to the interwar Estonian state. Differences in citizenship

policies indicate that majorities were influenced by the notion of inheritance also in the way they

defined the terms of inclusion at the time of state-building and regime change. In Romania and

Slovakia, where Hungarians were the politically most salient minority groups in first two

decades of post-communism, the granting of automatic citizenship to all residents became a

common sense option. In the Baltic region, Estonia (as also Latvia) made extraordinary efforts

to exclude Russian-speakers from the state, and it was only after consistent pressure by European

institutions that the Estonian government shifted its strategy from systematic exclusion to

increased minority integration. Independent Lithuania, in which Russian-speakers and a historic

Polish minority constituted minorities of roughly equal size, although the Polish minority

presented a greater challenge to the state, majority political actors adopted more liberal

citizenship and language policies.

Historical inheritance has been associated with the resourcefulness of minorities in

significant ways. Historic minorities in Romania, Slovakia, and Lithuania formed political

parties that sustained the support of the majority of their electorate since the beginning of

democratization, and they demonstrated continued interest in participating in political

competition at both state and local levels—although the Polish minority in Lithuania appeared to

be less politically engaged than Hungarians in Romania and Slovakia. Despite continuing

tensions over Hungarian claims for territorial autonomy, minority political integration appears to

be the highest in Romania and Slovakia, where Hungarian parties have been included in coalition

governments. This finding matches comparative evidence that democratic polities provide better

protection for ethnic minorities that gain access to political decision making. (Alonso and Ruiz-

Rufino 2007) The Russian-speaking minorities in both Estonia and Lithuania, categorized as

―settlers,‖ faced significantly higher constraints. Differences in citizenship and language policies

resulted in somewhat greater minority integration in Lithuania, but Russians in both states

remained politically weak and fragmented. The organizations they formed were unable to claim

and sustain support, and their political parties were ineffective.

Yet the emerging convergence in minority claims across these cases highlights some

important limitations of the historic vs non-historic dichotomy. The demands of Russian

minorities have become similar to those of historic minorities in the domain of language rights.

Just like Hungarians in Romania and Slovakia and Poles in Lithuania, Russians prefer official

bilingualism at the local level in regions where they make up a significant part of the population,

and they prefer to maintain Russian-language schools that teach the state language as a second

language. In other words, minority claims in all of these countries appear to converge in a

position that can be summed up as bilingualism without language shift. At the same time, they

accept majority language predominance, and the younger generation of Russians is increasingly

more competent in the state language, although their level of bilingualism has not reached that of

the historic minorities. This change may be explained at least in part by the relative territorial

concentration of Russians in both Lithuania and Estonia and in part by the convergence of

majority policies of integration. By the end of the first post-communist decade, majority elites in

all of these states had moved from a strategy of minority exclusion (which was most prominent

in Estonia, where the obvious effort was to encourage the outmigration of Russians) to an

integrative approach. As an outcome of this process, minorities in CEE are expected to integrate

into the political community—but the terms of integration and rules of appropriateness are

established by state majorities. These elements of convergence in the patterns of majority-

minority relations suggest that, despite the absence of coherence in European-level minority

policy (Bruno de Witte 2002), the process of ―Europeanization‖ may be expected to lead at least

to a greater degree of convergence in minority policies at the state level and in the patterns of

majority-minority contestation. If that is the case, however, then the new democracies in CEE

are more likely to tip the balance in favor of an assimilationist rather than multiculturalist

Europe.13

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