The Lingering Question of Russian Minorities in Baltic Nation-States

Russian-speaking minorities represent a substantial part of the population in the Baltic nations. Following their independence, these States were engaged in evolving into market-economies and building democracies as part of returning to Europe. However, this process of nation-building raised some very critical questions including the position of the Russian speakers within their societies and policies required to integrate them. The challenge of accepting substantive number of Russian speakers as part of the body politic has been continuous and crises in Ukraine as the 2014 and 2022 once again underscored the existential threat that Russia poses and the importance of successful integration and unquestionable loyalty of the Russian-speaking minorities for these states. This chapter analyses the nation-building process in these countries and argues that these states given their history and geography continue to follow aggressive nationalising policies though this has not been able to allay their fears of the Russian-speaking minority.