As for bureaucracy, no I didn't know that you have functional electronic government, that's really awesome! My comment was based on experiences there in 2006-2009, I guess a lot have changed since then.
> There are more differences than similarities.
I guess, you realize that that's a really pointless statement. Russian speaker can understand meaning of some spoken sentences and some other words are understandable if you read them. Sure, there are differences, - that's why they are considered separate languages! But Russian speaker without prior knowledge wouldn't understand any sentence in German or Norwegian. I hope this makes sense. Also, speakers of one Slavic language do not necessary understand all other Slavic language speakers, so this just isn't what you should expect from linguistically close languages.
By the way, that picture you linked to (in [4]) clearly shows that Polish is relatively closer to Lithuanian (51-70 distance) than Lithuanian is to German (>=71), check out the diagram's legend.
> Of course, officially they received some formal accusations.
Well, according to Lithuanian wikipedia, Antanas Miškinis has been a member of partisan movement, which can't really be dismissed as "formal accusation". More interestingly both Kazys Boruta and Kazys Jakubėnas have been imprisoned multiple times during the Lithuanian independence for political reasons. Kazys Boruta even has been exiled for both Lithuania and Latvia! I guess he haven't been sent to Siberia only because neither of Lithuania or Latvia had their own Siberia.
Am I again being nitpicky? Is it only bad when Soviets do it?
I presented wiki article, which did not consist of single image. There were, you know, words grouped in coherent sentences. If you read them, you'd see that the image you showed is just a visual representation of language taxonomy. Languages are divided in families, branches and groups. Indoeuropean language family has among others balto-slavic language branch which consists of presumably older Baltic and younger Slavic languages.
In the comment I originally responded you claimed that Latvian "language is so different it doesn't even belong to the same branch in the language tree". I pointed you that nope, actually it's the same branch. I understand that it's too much details and nuancé for some, but I presumed this being technical website people here would be accustomed to being precise. My appologies.
> There is no shared history. Latvia has been part of Germany or Swedish Empire and Polish Livonia far longer than it has ever been under Russian Empire/occupation.
Nations can have shared history even if they are ruled by different people. During most of the history there were no borders and people would move freely. Later they started to trade. Sholars and some richer people would travel intentionally to see different places. Government agents had to go where they were told. All this facilitated cultural exchange between different ethnic groups that lived in Baltic region. It's easy to see how this could influence languages, especially while languages were only used for oral communication.
> I communicate with people who speak either in Latvian or English.
At least half of Riga population has Russian as one of their mother languages. This percentage is pretty much the same across different communities, sexes and age groups. It was the same among my peers in schools, universities and workplace. If you truly don't know anyone that speaks Russian, you must really hate diversity.
> It seems like you're talking here about the older Russian minority living in Riga. They might be watching Russian TV, who could have thought?
Nope, it's older Latvian population I'm talking about. On a side note, how often do you access internet from different places? Try clearing your cookies and going to YouTube, it will show you what's trending among people in this area. Wherever you try this, no matter what ISP or accesspoint, there will be about half videos from Russia.
Most of the young Latvians that I know, including those from the countryside, are better versed in Russian comedy than in US/English. Russian Comedy Club and projects related to it are extremely well known. Certain Russian music groups are extremely popular, especially among smarter Latvian kids, for instance Akvarium. Last summer they gave a free consert on Dome Square, which was announced just an hour in advance, - it gathered large and mostly Latvian-speaking crowd. You can ignore all this as "damage that Soviet regime left" all you want, but the truth is that this has nothing to do with USSR and just shows that many people choose their entertainment out of what they find interesting/amusing, not what more suits their political agenda.
This hasn't been controversial in Latvia at all, at least in 90-00's (not that scientific theories should be judged by how controversial they are among laymen). The theory that I heard in several Latvian schools, is that lithuanians and latvians had a common language with slavs and they got separated somewhere in bronze age. Lithuanian language supposedly is the most archaic language alive (that is closest to proto-indo-european language by some measures). As far as I undestand there is consensus between linguists working in the field, that Baltic and Slavic languages are very close, the only questionable part is whether there was proto-balto-slavic language or whether these languages acquired similarities over time (also, some suggest that slavic languages separated from existing proto-baltic language).
Given tendency for revisionism and troubled past between Baltic states and Russia, one could see how it seems so alien to some people.
> 50 years by USSR + ~100 years by Russian Empire[0]
Lithuania in fact was part of Russian Empire. That does not classify it as occupation. There is no mention of occupation in your article, nor it is called an occupation by Lithuanian government. Also, it's a bad idea to revision 19th century Europe, as pretty much every country (that existed at that time in Europe) had done some pretty outrageous things then (by modern standards).
> Mass deportations[1] (5% of the population, most of whom died during severe Siberian winters)
Why are you bringing deportations into conversation about Soviet integration efforts? That obviously was a terrifying thing to do, but was completely irrelevant to russification/integration.
Also, the wiki article that you provide as a source quotes 28,000 that died in exile out of 130,000, that makes your statement about most of them dying in Siberian winters false (not that it has anything to do with this discussion anyway).
> total ban of press and schools in local language[2][3]
As for the press ban link, it's a bit misleading here, because what was actually banned in Russian Empire was Latin alphabet, which of course targeted newly acquired Polish/Lithuanian territories, but you were still allowed to publish books in Lithuanian language in cyrillics (and that was done). So, it was more of a language reform than a total ban of its usage.
In fact, this is pretty similar to how Japan after WWII tried to move from its Kanji hieroglyphical writing (which was associated with communist China) to romaji/latin (which was associated with their new allies - US).
> oppressive state police to prosecute or silently get rid of anybody standing against occupant government
Police in Russian Empire was ready to silently get rid of anybody standing against government, period. That has nothing to do whether that anybody happened to be/live in Vilnius or Moscow. Also, political oppression and scare tactics are pretty much irrelevant to discussion about russification/sovietization/integration efforts.
> There are no major cultural or ethnic similarities.
Apart from food, folklore, traditions, musical and literatal traditions, grammar and punctuation?
> The language is so different it doesn't even belong to the same branch in the language tree. (compared to family of Slavic languages - Ukrainian, Belarusian, Slovak, Polish, Czech, etc)
> Latvians do not want anything to do with Russia or it's culture or it's politics.
Politics - wery true, culture - not much so. Older people might not want to have anything to do with Russian culture, but they don't really have much choice, as there isn't much going on in Latvia and they don't speak English. Thus every old lady in the country knows what's going on between Pugacheva and Kirkorov (old Russian pop-figures) and pretty much everyone is watching Russian TV (because there is no alternatives entertainment-wise).
You have a good point. I just wanted to add that Baltic States haven't even been the most liberal/democratic part of USSR. In fact, some of the Latvian authors had to go publish their works in Moscow/St. Petersburg, because it wasn't possible in Latvian SSR. Speaking with older generations here, and I mean native Latvians/Estonians who had studied in Moscow/St. Petersburg, they often mention culture shock which they experienced there, as there was the whole Counterculture thing going on in Russia which was unheard of in Baltics.
> EDIT: also, the fact that during the >150 years occupation we've managed to stay separate nation (despite huge efforts by Russia to integrate us) and keep our identity strong, says a lot of how different we are.
There was no "150 years of occupation", AFAIK even Lithuania's government officially talks only about 50 years of occupation by USSR. And most of the countries that were part of USSR managed to keep their identities (basically everyone apart from Belarus), so integration efforts haven't really that "huge".