Authors

Discussion

In this paper, we revisit our research on the everyday lives and senses of belonging of Russian speakers in Estonia and Latvia, through the lenses of critical decoloniality and anthropology of relation. We highlight how both academic and political realms often perpetuate a constrained, one-dimensional depiction of them as “figures of lack” (Mbembe 2021, 26) – lacking integration, deficient in language skills, and anchored in the past, thereby supposedly devoid of progressive, future-oriented qualities. This approach has resurfaced prominently following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, a time when the ethnocentric context places higher expectations on local Russian speakers to conform to the hegemonic discourse of identity and allegiance to the Baltic countries. We endeavour to critically reassess the position of Russian speakers within the recent decolonial initiatives in the Baltic states and beyond. We contend that these initiatives often fall short in deconstructing the so-called grey zones of liminality and non-being, wherein the “figures of lack” are frequently placed. These grey zones, instead of fostering understanding, are dominated by non-knowledge and misconceptions. Our ethnographic insights underscore the pressing need to address and reconceptualise these zones, moving beyond the limiting confines of established knowledge systems. We achieve this not only through displacement of the established approaches towards Russian speakers but also by examining how relations shape them and their multifaceted socialities in everyday life. Lastly, we address the inherent partiality in research practices, including our own, discussing the scholarly language, its manifestations in analysis, and its subsequent effect.