Latvia
The share of ethnic Latvians had fallen from 77% (1,467,035) in 1935 to 52% (1,387,757) in 1989. In 2011, there were even fewer Latvians than in 1989, though their share of the population was larger – 1,285,136 (62.1% of the population).
The sole official language of Latvia is Latvian, which belongs to the Baltic language sub-group of the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. Another notable language of Latvia is the nearly extinct Livonian language of the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family, which enjoys protection by law; Latgalian – referred to as either a dialect or a distinct separate language of Latvian – is also formally protected by Latvian law but only as a historical variation of the Latvian language. Russian, which was widely spoken during the Soviet period, is still the most widely used minority language by far (in 2011, 34% spoke it at home, including people who were not ethnically Russian).
While it is now required that all school students learn Latvian, most schools also include English, Russian and German in their curricula. English and Russian are also widely accepted in Latvia, especially in business and tourism. there were 109 schools for minorities that use Russian as the language of instruction for 40% of subjects (the remaining 60% of subjects are taught in Latvian).
Russian language in Latvia
The most prominent Russian-language newspaper in Latvia from 1918 to 1940 was Segodnya (‘Today’) and it was known far beyond Latvia. During the Latvian SSR Sovetskaya Molodyozh (‘Soviet Youth’) first published in 1945 became a popular newspaper successfully competing with other Russian-language newspapers from the rest of the USSR. After the restoration of independence in 1991 the traditions of Sovetskaya Molodyozh were continued by newspapers such as Vesti segodnya (‘Today’s News’), Chas (‘The Hour’), Biznes&Baltia (‘Business & The Baltics’), Telegraph and others. Nowadays, 4 daily Russian-language national newspapers, 11 weekly newspapers, as well as a dozen regional papers and over 30 magazines on various topics are published in Latvia.