In order to form a strong, cohesive, national and democratic community in Latvia, the government must focus on civil society and its integration, national identity and a cohesive social memory. (Muiznieks, 2010:33) Therefore this section will concentrate on the issues related to the Russian speaking people integration into the Latvian society.
Public discourse of 1997 initiated several political decisions concerning social integration in the Latvian Republic. Firstly, the Integration Program was initiated in Estonia, and served as an example for developing the Integration Program in Latvian. The stepping-stones of the Program were unsolved issues of ethnopolitics and concern that there is a strong need to integrate non – citizens in the society. (Gundare, 2001:13)
During the years after the adoption of the Citizenship Law (1994) in Latvia, it became clear that the rate of naturalization was too low – non-citizens constituted 23% of the present population of Latvia, “new citizens,” people who have gained citizenship since naturalization was introduced,
felt too estranged from the Latvian state to burden themselves with the naturalization process and its expenses. In addition, in 1997 the Latvian president Guntis Ulmanis, supported by Max van der Stoel, High Commissioner for National Minorities of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the head of the OSCE mission in Latvia, began to pressure the Latvian Parliament to liberalize the Citizenship Law. Hence, in July 1997, the Report of the European Commission “Agenda 2000” recommended that Latvia should not take more steps to speed up the process of naturalization. (Gundare, 2001:13)
Prime Minister of the Latvian Republic made a request in 1998, which was about forming working groups in order to develop the framework of the Integration Program. In this case the first version of the Integration Program was founded. In one year, the project of the Integration Program was ready for public discussion. But editing and approval of the Integration Program was time-consuming, and it was adopted only in February 2001.
But, nevertheless, the Integration Program was adopted in 2001 and was on public discussions.
There are several weaknesses in the Program and in its implementation. First of all, development of the Program has been extremely slow. (Gundare, 2011:13) The government and the Parliament of the Latvian Republic have not given the impression that integration is their priority and often they were passive observers of the process of integration. In addition, some parliamentary deputies have even made statements that were opposing to the main ideas of the Integration Program. For example, Dzintars Abikis from the People’s Party said that “the highest level of integration is assimilation.” (Kahanec, Zaiceva 2009)Some parliamentary deputies believe that the Program is only the recommendation of theoreticians, a theoretical ideal adopted by the government.
The Latvian Integration Program tends to assimilate Russian-speaking population. Some may argue that the current program encourages Latvians determine Russian speaking non-citizen actions. The concept of integration has been repeatedly criticized by different cultural societies, mainly by Russian-speaking population, and, above all, Russian- speaking people did not agree with the imposed term “migrant”. However, the Ministry of Culture explained that the term was used in the international sense, and do not offend anyone. (ibid: 4)
Russian-speaking part of civil society in Latvia, met with, from their point of view, negative integration program, which is more like another attempt to assimilate Russian-speaking population in Latvia. That is how the nation of Russian-speaking people commented on the Latvian authorities' attempts to "unite" the Russian-speaking population into the Latvian Society.
(Public integration in Latvia: 10)
The statistical data on trends in the displacement of the Russian-speaking population in Latvian schools does not exist, however, analyzing the data, which came from minority of the Latvian population, we came to certain conclusions. The essence of the opinions of the minority is that the tacit political agreement in Riga and Latvia as a whole are decisive in the appointment of school principals. Also, there is seen the tendency of displacement Russian-speaking personnel from the administrative structures of the school. (Zepa, 2005:11)
According to history, in order to Russian-speaking population become an active participant in school education in Latvia, it needs necessary autonomy. Autonomy of Russian education - is not only an alternative to the status of Russian education in Latvia, which apparently complied with the norms of democracy, and essentially all issues are resolved without the participation of civil society in Latvia, but it is the civilized way out of the conflict, which could organize a Russian and the Latvian part of society.
To sum up, postulated by the Ministry of Culture the basic principles of integration do not correspond to the roots of the proclaimed democratic values, including the availability and adoption of modern society, multicultural heritage as well as the right to maintain and develop their culture to all national minorities living in the area .In its core the proposed Program by the Ministry of Culture - called "Integration" is aimed to full assimilation of national minorities without taking into consideration their cultural space in the cultural sphere of the national majority. (Muiznieks, 2010:37)