A Very Stale Mate

As part of his anti-Putin activism, Garry Kasparov is seeking Latvian nationality. He might get it. He should count himself very lucky indeed if he does. In particular, he should thank his lucky stars that he had no connection to Latvia prior to his marriage.

Born in Azerbaijan, Kasparov is not an ethnic Russian. His mother was an Armenian, his father a Jew. But Jews are among those who, not being deemed ethnic Latvians, are denied citizenship even if they were born in Latvia, and even if their families have lived there for centuries.

However, the overwhelming majority of that third or so of the population is ethnically Russian. That is the situation inside NATO and the European Union. That is what Kasparov seeks to endorse by becoming a Latvian citizen.

Why do not they, too, seek naturalisation? It is prohibitively expensive to many. And in any case, why should they, in the land of their birth, and often of their long ancestry, longer than almost all black or white Americans have had ancestors in America, far longer than any Australians other than the Aborigines can trace their lineage on that soil, and ludicrously longer than most Israeli families have been present on that territory?

The Arabs and the "ultra-Orthodox" Haredi Jews are under threat of a similar denaturalisation in Israel, and are in many ways being treated as if that had already happened, especially in the Arab case. At best, they would, and they very well may, have to go through the indignity of seeking citizenship of their native land, citizenship that they previously held; few, if any, would demean themselves and their bloodlines by so doing.

We should and must protest at that impending, and increasingly actual, situation. Yet we say nothing about the treatment of that kind which has already been meted out a very great deal nearer to home. It is only one generation since the Baltic States were fully incorporated parts of the Soviet Union, so that all of their inhabitants were equally Soviet citizens. Those who are now expected to seek naturalisation were once full citizens exactly where they now live, which is exactly where they have lived since they were born.

There is a country within NATO and within the EU where Jews as Jews, as well as Gypsies as Gypsies, among others, cannot be citizens. (Jews and Gypsies are also constitutionally barred from the Senate and the Presidency of the Bosnia-Herzegovina that "the West" so violently carved out as an independent state for the first time ever.) But that is all right, because the main point is that Russians, as Russians, cannot be citizens.

For all the undeniable faults of the present Government of Russia, look at its opponents. The totally unreconstructed Communist Party of the Russian Federation, notable for its Soviet flags at demonstrations. Those who on those occasions wave the equally ubiquitous black, yellow and white of Russian ultranationalism in all its anti-modern, anti-urban, anti-scientific and anti-Semitic awfulness. The Caucasian Islamists. The National Bolsheviks, whose flag is that of Nazi Germany, but with a black hammer and sickle in place of the swastika.

Garry Kasparov, seeking the Latvian nationality that is denied to the huge number of ethnic Russians who were born in Latvia and who have long ties to what is now that state, an enormous proportion of its population. The Greenpeace pirates, whose activities would be illegal in any jurisdiction on earth. Pussy Riot, one of whose number has apparently been sent to Siberia. Best place for her, say I: imagine if a similar act were to be committed during this Sunday's Remembrance ceremonies.

Both Greenpeace and Pussy Riot put neoconservative Bear-baiters in a very difficult position. But they present no such difficulties to or for the rest of us. The trick is never to have been a Trotskyist in the first place. Or, if one did ever fall into that system, to have grown out of it entirely. However, although it does sometimes happen, very few people ever manage the latter. Very, very, very few people, indeed.