Читать книгу Ethnic Conflicts in the Baltic States in Post-soviet Period - Сборник статей - Страница 18

Historical memory is one of the important factors forming ethnic identity of a group. Different interpretations of certain historic events allow dividing any society into different groups and play them against each other.

In electoral behaviour of people in Latvia, there is an apparent ethnolinguistic segregation, where ethnic Latvians mainly vote for certain parties while non-Latvians, who are mostly Russian-speaking, tend to vote for other parties.

One of the reasons of such segregation may lie in different historical memory of particular historic events in the two aforementioned groups. Identification of this problem has determined the choice of the topic for this article.

The article provides overall and territorial characteristic of two communities in Latvia, their interpretation of particular historic events and their support of particular political parties in parliamentary elections of 2011.