Russian Union of Latvia/Facebook
A campaign on reciting verses held the day before in Riga was dedicated to the 125th anniversary of Vladimir Mayakovsky. However, the campaign had another purpose too, which was to call for preservation of teaching in languages of the national minorities, including Russian, at the Latvian schools. Hundreds of supporters came to the meeting in Vermansky park, TASS reports.
The participants were reciting verses and lines from books by the Russian writers and poets for three hours. The campaign was supported by the leader of Russian Union of Latvia Tatiana Zhdanok and the European Parliament deputy Miroslav Mitrofanov.
More than 40 people gave speeches at the VersesMarch. Along with classical prose and poetry, people cited verses of modern poets including the lines, which they wrote themselves.
Russian Union of Latvia/Facebook
According to the activists, the people indifferent to the status of the Russian language in the Baltic countries prepare new protest campaigns. In particular, in the first part of August there will be a moto and car race around the Latvian cities in support of the Russian-language schools. Later, in the middle of September, the social activists are preparing a protest campaign at the Ratushnaya Square. Activists hope that the campaign in September will gather more than 30 000 people.
As the Russkiy Mir Foundation reported
earlier, recently in Latvia a law was approved which transfers all the national schools into the state Latvian language of teaching. The Russian language and Russian literature continue to be studied, but in a very restricted scope. Besides, the higher education from now and on is fully transferred to the Latvian language including the private universities.
Russkiy Mir
