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— 31 —
p f I : Chapter V.
Instances of Breach of the Minorities’ Rights.
The systematic oppression and plunder of the defenceless
minorities of Latvia and Eesti has been manifested in various ways. Only
a few instances need be quoted — characteristic of this whole system.
The events of the war and the Bolshevik invasion forced a considerable
number of the landed proprietors of Latvia and Eesti to flee abroad
as refugees, but all their present endeavours to obtain permission to
return to their homes, are unsuccessful, various futile pretexts being
extended to support this refusal. In their absence, their property is
being confiscated, and those who decide to be naturalised in another
State are denied the right of option to liquidate their affairs in their
own country. The government administration of these estates by
incapable and dishonest State officials has been most destructive in
consequence of waste and robbery. Stupendous deficits amounting to
millions of roubles are the result and are charged to the proprietor,
and covered by forced sales of agricultural implements. Thus any
com–pensation is automatically wiped out.
In Eesti, religious instruction - is no longer obligatory in public
schools. This measure has created consternation among the Ests
themselves, who are by nature religious. The country churches and
vicarages whose regular stipend was the land granted to them by the large
landowners, have been deprived of their previous means of existence,
their land having been confiscated without the grant of any sort of
compensation. The pastors now receive from the community a salary
which is quite inadequate. In Latvia, the land belonging to each
country Church was expropriated, leaving a remnant plot of some 49 acres,
for the pastor’s use. In many towns, villages and scattered country
districts, the parishes include a German-speaking and a Lettish
community which both use the same Church. Consequently, each
congregation should be given the portion of land left over for the use of their
respective pastors. But it was only the Lettish congregation who were
granted land for their pastor, while the German-speaking congregation
were denied such. The centuries’old Baltic-Protestant Church of St. James
(Jacobi) in Riga, is to be expropriated against the expressed will of the
parishioners, in order that Roman Catholics Letts should have it. Other
churches belonging to the Russian and German-speaking communities
are also to be taken over by the Letts. Many schools of the minorities
are subjected to a system of destruction by forceful means, such as the
expropriation of the building of the Baltic classical school at Goldingen,
the grammar school at Postroggen, Puhnen, Katzdangen and Kikkurn in
Latvia. Only quite recently, the municipal administration at Riga,
decreed that the directors of the German schools in the town should
pass a written and oral examination in the Lettish language, before the
beginning of the next term; the town representatives of German racial
origin protested — of course in vain!
In Latvia three , languages are spoken, Lettish, German and
Russian, and in Eesti the languages are Estonian, German and
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