The
worrisome case of a “disloyal” teacher of Russian language and literature,
Vladislavs Rafalskis, has dominated some of the Latvian media in recent days. A
teacher at a Riga school he made the “disloyal” statement on a radio show.
Rafaļskis, a member of the For Human Rights In A United Latvia party (PCTVL),
told a radio program recently: "I can honestly say that I am disloyal to
this country. I simply despise this regime. It alienates my children too, and
creates problems for them."
I
am willing to believe that Rafalskis may be motived by some wacko ideas about
the Latvian state and what he believes the government should have done for the
Russian population etc. These may be heartfelt views, even if one could
disagree with them or even strongly oppose them. In any case, Rafalskis has not
expressed his disgust with Latvia as dramatically as some 300 000 people, who
have left and are probably not coming back – aren’t they more “disloyal”?? And
somehow I don’t believe that his political views affect his teaching, or that
he will tell children that in Russian a dog is a frog or teach other wrong
vocabulary. What disturbs me about this case is that it has started a push for
some kind of loyalty policing at schools and other state-financed institutions.
This will inevitably have a chilling effect on teachers who may want to provoke
political debate among their (older) students by expressing “radical” views.
Already, there are dozens of comments on news portals and social media
demanding that Rafalskis be fired, deported, etc.
Any
ideas of a formal or informal “loyalty police” should be nipped in the bud in a democratic
country, because full democracy and freedom of expression includes criticizing the state, even declaring
one’s opposition to its legitimacy and existence. After all, didn’t most
Latvians consider as heroes the
dissidents who rejected the legitimacy of the Soviet Union and did they not
consider it unjust that people who didn’t join the Communist Party (another
badge of loyalty) were denied career advancement? Was a Communist doctor better
than a non-party member?
The
other thing that is scary about “loyalty”, besides the fact that it is a
relative, “rubber” concept, is that it elevates the state above the individual
and creates an enforceable duty for free individuals to express respect and
fealty for what is, in the final analysis, an abstraction and a social
construct. It grants the state and parts of society (those calling for measures
against “the disloyal”) the right to officially or unofficially punish a
person’s convictions or attitude. That is hardly the same thing as punishing an
act that may be motivated by “disloyalty” to a particular state or political
system, but even acts of symbolic protest involving state property should be
treated with the greatest care for the element of free expression and political
protest that this may involve.
One
should also somewhat of an uproar when some members of the National Alliance
showed up at a day care center to teach Latvian patriotism by displaying
German-made World II weapons. Was
this “good loyalty” as opposed to Rafaļskis “bad disloyalty” speaking to an
adult audience on the radio (and speaking of the political regime, not the
abstract nation-state). Teaching should follow guidelines for political debate
at appropriate levels – the older the pupils and the closer to voting age, the
more it should be encouraged. For older classes, political diversity among teachers
must be supported and protected, because children, when they become young
adults in the “real world”, will be confronted with different, sometimes harsh
viewpoints no matter what their schools tried to teach. Above all, the schools
should produce free, critical thinking individuals, not “loyal subjects”.
