Peasants, Intellectuals, and Nationalism in the Russian Baltic Provinces, 1820-90.

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An observer of urban life in the Baltic provinces of the Russian Empire during the second half of the nineteenth century might have found the German word Volkswerdung singularly appropriate for describing the character of urban change. Riga, Wolmar, Wenden, Fellin, Pemau, and Dorpat in Livland; Libau and Mitau in Kurland; and Reval in Estland-in all these towns the number of inhabitants was increasing rapidly.' Yet in the Baltic area mere numerical expansion was not the most important change. The more dramatic break with the past lay in the rapid growth and reconstitution of those urban language groups that also possessed a new consciousness of nationality. German speakers-for centuries the proprietors of urban land, occupations, and culture-were crowded aside by Latvian and Estonian speakers, whose vociferous leaders saw this process of displacement as long overdue and its conclusion as preordained. The population of the major city of Riga, for instance, expanding from 102,590 inhabitants in 1867 to 282,230 in 1897, experienced a reversal of the significant language groups: in 1867, 24 percent of the city population was Latvian-speaking and 43 percent German-speaking, while in 1897, Latvian speakers made up 45 percent and German speakers 22 percent of the total (see table 1).2