Latvian Protests against the Russian War in Ukraine: Changing Semiotics and Language Policies Throughout a Year of Terror

• In Event: Shifting Language Policies and Practices in the Shadow of the War in Ukraine (II)

Abstract

When Russia started its war against Ukraine on 24 February, 2022, Latvian society experienced an actualisation of some of its worst historically-rooted traumas – the dystopia of being denied its independence, sided by terror and deportation. As a consequence, Latvia has been among the countries with the strongest policies of supporting Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees, and of containing possible further aggression by Russia.
Official policies are largely supported by the population. Everywhere in Latvia, individuals, private companies and public institutions have reacted to Russia’s invasion by publicly displaying messages of fear and anger. Ukrainian flags and other symbols have become common in Latvian cities. This has led to remarkable changes in the linguistic and semiotic landscape of Latvia.
Against this background, our paper provides an overview of such changes since February 2022. First, we discuss examples of how the LL reflects public discourses: e.g., adaptions of symbols related to Ukraine, anti-Putin posters, pictures of war horrors, or the dismantlement of remaining Soviet-time monuments. In a second part, the paper zooms in on the protest landscape close to the Russian Embassy in Riga. Starting with large protests in March 2022, we have regularly documented the protest-related LL. In this, we identify notable quantitative and qualitative changes: topics have changed according to how the war develops, with dystopian and utopian claims and symbols side by side. In addition, the LL is also indicative of changing language policies in Latvia in which more tolerance is given to languages other than Latvian in public space, where, ironically, even Russian regains prominence. In total, our paper thereby attempts at categorising protest-related signs, as they react to the terror in Ukraine.

Author

• Sanita Martena, Rēzekne Academy of Technologies