Linguistic human rights in the Baltic States

The Baltic States - Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia - regained their independence in 1991. During their 50-year period of incorporation into the USSR great ethnodemographic changes had taken place. The percentage of members of the titular nations diminished significantly in relation to the total population. And a decrease in the use of Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian, as well as asymmetric bilingualism, were observed. All three states adopted Language Laws in 1988 that decreed that the respective titular languages were to be the only official state languages. Nowadays the related changes in the language hierarchies are slowly taking place; the new state languages are step-by-step replacing the Russian language, which previously covered all important sociolinguistic functions. The main goal of language policy in the Baltic states is to create a linguistically normalized society, where the titular languages function as the real state languages, and where loyal minorities live within a legal framework of cultural autonomy. This article analyzes the concept of collective linguistic rights for the Russian-speaking population, as well as the individual's linguistic human rights in the Baltic states, against their political, ethnodemographic, and psychological background.