Latvian voters have thoroughly rejected a proposal to make Russian an official language in Latvia. This defeat came through a referendum on Saturday, and is expected to leave its mark on an already divided society.

Currently, Russian is the first tongue for about 33% of the Baltic county’s 2.1 million population. The majority of these people would like to make Russian an official language in order to reverse the 20 years of discrimination.

Yet for ethnic Latvians, the referendum was seen as a clear attempt to encroach on Latvia’s independence, which they earned officially in 1991 after approximately 50 years under the Soviet Union. As a result, many Latvians negatively portray Russian as the language of their former occupiers.

“Society is divided into two classes. One half has full rights, and the other half’s rights are violated,” Aleksejs Yevdokimovs told the Moscow Times. “The Latvian half always employs a presumption of guilt toward the Russian half so that we have to prove things that shouldn’t need to be proved.”

This issue mobilised large amounts of voters, as more than 70% of registered voters cast ballots on Saturday. This made the turnout considerably higher than in previous elections and referendums.

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