> Baltic languages are very clearly distinct from Slavic ones
No, they are not and you're picture is not an argument for this claim. There are differences between Baltic and Slavic languages, sure, but grammatically they are very close. Rules of conjugation/declension are similar, word formation works the same, punctuation rules are almost exactly same, capitalization is similar, word order is close enough that it can be used interchangeably. It's easy to see how that could happen, given long shared history. Denying facts because of your political points is just ridiculous.
> All older ladies I know do not watch Russian television and don't understand Russian language well enough to do so.
You're right, I shouldn't have used that hyperbole. Of course not everyone is watching Russian TV, but in Riga most older people definitely do. And by older I mean >40 years, not necessary seniors. If you live in Riga and haven't met any of them, you probably just are very picky about people you communicate with.
You presented the wikipedia article (which contained the image clearly showing two distinct branches) as an argument to begin with. Now it's not good enough anymore?
There are differences between Polish and Russian language. Between Latvian and Russian language - for all intents and purposes - there is nothing common. Oh, but both languages have free-word order!
There is no shared history. Latvia has been part of Germany or Swedish Empire and Polish Livonia far longer than it has ever been under Russian Empire/occupation.
I communicate with people who speak either in Latvian or English.
It seems like you're talking here about the older Russian minority living in Riga. They might be watching Russian TV, who could have thought?
I literally don't know a single Latvian - old or young - who watches Russian TV.
I do know older people (>40) people who don't know English well enough (and are too lazy to learn), so they would occasionally watch downloaded American movies or TV-series over-dubbed in Russian.
I think it's pretty clear by now on whose behalf you are posting here.
I'm done here.
I presented wiki article, which did not consist of single image. There were, you know, words grouped in coherent sentences. If you read them, you'd see that the image you showed is just a visual representation of language taxonomy. Languages are divided in families, branches and groups. Indoeuropean language family has among others balto-slavic language branch which consists of presumably older Baltic and younger Slavic languages.
In the comment I originally responded you claimed that Latvian "language is so different it doesn't even belong to the same branch in the language tree". I pointed you that nope, actually it's the same branch. I understand that it's too much details and nuancé for some, but I presumed this being technical website people here would be accustomed to being precise. My appologies.
> There is no shared history. Latvia has been part of Germany or Swedish Empire and Polish Livonia far longer than it has ever been under Russian Empire/occupation.
Nations can have shared history even if they are ruled by different people. During most of the history there were no borders and people would move freely. Later they started to trade. Sholars and some richer people would travel intentionally to see different places. Government agents had to go where they were told. All this facilitated cultural exchange between different ethnic groups that lived in Baltic region. It's easy to see how this could influence languages, especially while languages were only used for oral communication.
> I communicate with people who speak either in Latvian or English.
At least half of Riga population has Russian as one of their mother languages. This percentage is pretty much the same across different communities, sexes and age groups. It was the same among my peers in schools, universities and workplace. If you truly don't know anyone that speaks Russian, you must really hate diversity.
> It seems like you're talking here about the older Russian minority living in Riga. They might be watching Russian TV, who could have thought?
Nope, it's older Latvian population I'm talking about. On a side note, how often do you access internet from different places? Try clearing your cookies and going to YouTube, it will show you what's trending among people in this area. Wherever you try this, no matter what ISP or accesspoint, there will be about half videos from Russia.
Most of the young Latvians that I know, including those from the countryside, are better versed in Russian comedy than in US/English. Russian Comedy Club and projects related to it are extremely well known. Certain Russian music groups are extremely popular, especially among smarter Latvian kids, for instance Akvarium. Last summer they gave a free consert on Dome Square, which was announced just an hour in advance, - it gathered large and mostly Latvian-speaking crowd. You can ignore all this as "damage that Soviet regime left" all you want, but the truth is that this has nothing to do with USSR and just shows that many people choose their entertainment out of what they find interesting/amusing, not what more suits their political agenda.
The post I was replying to, specifically mentioned Latvia. I mostly agree with your characterization of Lithuania. Well, I would add corruption and bureaucracy to the things that still make Lithuania look very familiar to many Russians.
Lithuania - corruption index 32/168 [1]
Russia - corruption index 119/168 [2]
Regarding bureaucracy:
You do know that almost everything in Lithuania is done electronically?
I can open a company in a couple of days without leaving my house.
Same with my taxes.
And if I do need to sign something, I usually sign it with my e-signature and just send over the signed PDF.
I haven't seen much bureaucracy here in years.
Now try that in Russia.
Language-wise (another parent, but I'm too lazy to make a 2nd comment):
I speak both - Russian and Lithuanian... and while there are similarities, like next to no word order, structure, punctuation etc.
There are more differences than similarities.
Roots of most words are different.
There are more verb forms in Lithuanian [3] which slavic languages lack.
Lithuanian still preserves a fully functional future tense, unlike say slavic languages that lost the future tense (like english) and have to use a compound future tense.
Lithuanian itself feels much more archaic.
Linguistically the baltic languages are as close to slavic languages as they are close to german languages[4]
As for bureaucracy, no I didn't know that you have functional electronic government, that's really awesome! My comment was based on experiences there in 2006-2009, I guess a lot have changed since then.
> There are more differences than similarities.
I guess, you realize that that's a really pointless statement. Russian speaker can understand meaning of some spoken sentences and some other words are understandable if you read them. Sure, there are differences, - that's why they are considered separate languages! But Russian speaker without prior knowledge wouldn't understand any sentence in German or Norwegian. I hope this makes sense. Also, speakers of one Slavic language do not necessary understand all other Slavic language speakers, so this just isn't what you should expect from linguistically close languages.
By the way, that picture you linked to (in [4]) clearly shows that Polish is relatively closer to Lithuanian (51-70 distance) than Lithuanian is to German (>=71), check out the diagram's legend.
> It was done to get rid of any influential people with authority, that could teach others and later cause problems.
I do not argue, that people were deported for political reasons. However, we were discussing cultural integration/assimilation, so I assume you imply that people were deported to prevent that. That's not the case though. There were three big waves of departations:
1. 1941, Soviets just came and were preparing for war. They didn't want to have near the front line people who might be less-than-patriotic, so they deported policemen, politicians, religious leaders, etc. Sort of how US sent Japanese to camps after Pearl Harbor.
2. 1944, Soviet forces reached Lithuania again and war was still raging, so they deported Lithuanian partisans, remaining Baltic Germans and so on. Again, they did not target teachers, doctors etc specifically.
3. 1948, war is over and Soviets are trying to implement collectivization - distribution of wealth and property, but many wealthy people resist. So, they are deported as well. These were mostly farmers as collectivization was mostly about abolishing private farms and making them comunal. Yet again, people haven't been targeted here for being "too Lithuanian" or refusing to speak Russian.
Soviets targeted teachers too. Well, whoever they presumed would be opposed to occupation and/or pro-independence. Coincidentally, that was most of the educated people. Teachers, doctors, architects, lawyers...
My grandgrandparents were on the list just because they were teachers in a small town. They didn't end up in Siberia just because some of their ex-students ended up in local police and pulled strings to remove them from the list. They were kicked out of their jobs and had to work shitty jobs for the rest if their lives though.
A remote relative was a lawyer. Small time solicitor in small town in the middle of nowhere. Direct ticket to Siberia. Eventually he was allowed to leave Siberia, but not allowed to settle in Lithuania. He did get permission to get back to Lithuania late in life though.
Neither of them actively supported anti-Soviet resistance or Nazis. Not wealthy either, unless you count a small townhouse in province towns as wealth. They got in trouble just because they were educated and seemed to be a threat to Soviet establishment.
You are nitpicking facts again. Neither of your three points explain why artists, especially writers, were deported. Also, deporting might serve more than one purpose, so it might be both to get rid of political dissidents and help russification. Honestly, your comments sound just like classics from troll factory rule book: take some unimportant aspects of an argument and draw an opponent down the spiral discussing minor details to bury the original topic (which, let me remind you, was a) Baltic states are separate nations from Russia and b) were occupied by it).
> a) Baltic states are separate nations from Russia and b) were occupied by it).
I actually agree with both of these points. In fact, these are just basic facts, what's there to discuss?
But if you say "here is fact X and I prove it by Y" where X is true and Y - exagerration or outright falsehood, why is it wrong to challenge Y? I actually find this a form of trolling, because if you continue slipping an untrue with well known facts often enough, then some people might start thinking - that other thing must be true as well.
> Neither of your three points explain why artists, especially writers, were deported.
That's a good point, I don't actually know any Lithuanian artists or writers that have been deported. Could you please name some of them? That would indeed invalidate my argument.
(Btw, this - learning something new - is exactly why I am trying to have a discussion at all, it's nice when people answer with facts, even if these facts change your position, instead of useless rhetorics.)
"That's a good point, I don't actually know any Lithuanian artists or writers that have been deported."
I can't find source in English, but it's a well known fact taught in school in Lithuania. You can find it in on Lithuanian Wikipedia page[0], that states:
"Iš viso sovietų valdžios buvo įkalintas ar deportuotas 81 lietuvių rašytojas."
My translation: "a total of 81 Lithuanian writers were imprisoned or deported by Soviet government".
To name few, well-known writers: Antanas Miškinis, Kazys Boruta, Kazys Jakubėnas. Of course, officially they received some formal accusations. Other writers were forced to write pieces glorifying Lenin, Stalin, Soviet Union and their heroes or be imprisoned/deported too. Some obeyed to avoid ill fate.
> Of course, officially they received some formal accusations.
Well, according to Lithuanian wikipedia, Antanas Miškinis has been a member of partisan movement, which can't really be dismissed as "formal accusation". More interestingly both Kazys Boruta and Kazys Jakubėnas have been imprisoned multiple times during the Lithuanian independence for political reasons. Kazys Boruta even has been exiled for both Lithuania and Latvia! I guess he haven't been sent to Siberia only because neither of Lithuania or Latvia had their own Siberia.
Am I again being nitpicky? Is it only bad when Soviets do it?
> Most of Lithuania was annexed by Russia by 1795
> ...
> That's >120 years of occupation or foreign rule. Especially in the era of colonialism/imperialism.
You are right, but foregin rule does not amount to occupation. Also, none of the "big players" in Europe has perfectly good consciousness with regards to borders, so we generally disregard everything that happened before 20th century. I understand that it's painful for smaller nations, but this is exactly the reason WWI happened, and we don't want that to return.
> I haven't followed up the development in Lithuania in particular, but Estonia had roughly the same population in 1959 as it had in 1939. The difference was that almost one third of the old population had been eradicated and replaced by Russians (and other Soviet nationals).
> This is a fairly huge "integration effort", if we use that euphemism.
Yep, that's the famous "soviet reshuffling". People were incentivised to move to other regions. That was mostly done with positive things though, e.g. young family could get a free flat if they moved to other SSR. Also, drafts would usually send soldiers far from home, so that they could get to know a new region (and many stayed there after getting out of millitary).
Your explanation "The difference was that almost one third of the old population had been eradicated and replaced by Russians (and other Soviet nationals)." doesn't seem to be supported by facts though. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Estonia we get 992,520 Estonians in 1934 and 892,653 in 1959. The 10% difference could be accounted if you take into account people that died in WWII, those that have emigrated when soviets came, reshuffling that I mentioned and just people claiming to be russians (which was a thing).
If you have other sources or more in-depth research, I would absolutely love to read it.
No, they are not and you're picture is not an argument for this claim. There are differences between Baltic and Slavic languages, sure, but grammatically they are very close. Rules of conjugation/declension are similar, word formation works the same, punctuation rules are almost exactly same, capitalization is similar, word order is close enough that it can be used interchangeably. It's easy to see how that could happen, given long shared history. Denying facts because of your political points is just ridiculous.
> All older ladies I know do not watch Russian television and don't understand Russian language well enough to do so.
You're right, I shouldn't have used that hyperbole. Of course not everyone is watching Russian TV, but in Riga most older people definitely do. And by older I mean >40 years, not necessary seniors. If you live in Riga and haven't met any of them, you probably just are very picky about people you communicate with.