“Sanction”, “rashist” and “Putinoid”. How the war changed the Russian language
“Baltic” is an imperialist view
The norms of the Russian language are usually quite conservative and develop slowly, despite the fact that live oral speech is quite mobile, changeable, and receptive. But changes are fixed by norms only over time. This is necessary so that speakers of the same language, separated from each other by time and distance, continue to understand each other.
As for controversial issues, here we are talking about a contradiction with the norms in contentious disputes. For example, the norms of the Russian language, reflected in the dictionaries, still continue to consider “Tallinn”, and not “Tallinn”, although in Estonia and in Russian the second option is the preferred option.
So the name “Baltic” takes in itself a Moscow-centric orientation, an imperialist view of the Russian government on its outskirts, which is indebted to political subjectivity.
Moreover, behind the name “Baltic” there is an idea of the geographical and administrative space that developed in the Russian Empire in the 18th-19th centuries. After the transfer of Peter the territory, in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation and Estonia, bypassing the provinces, which were called Ostsee – by the German name for the Baltic Sea. And under Alexander III, who persistently carried out a nationalistic Russification check, this expression was also Russified – and this is how the Baltic region, the Baltic provinces appeared.
Lithuania, included in the empire under Catherine II, did not belong to them, it was, together with Belarus, part of another, continental space of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and usually Kovno, Vilna, Grodno provinces had one governor-general. The Kovno province did not have access to the Baltic Sea: the current Lithuanian coast belonged to the Courland province, became south of Palanga, and then Prussia was already there.
Only in the interwar years, due to the similarity of the provisions of history and provisions, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania perceive themselves in connection with unity, arrest as the Baltic countries (including in the press of these countries in Russian), to look for ways of meeting and cultural rapprochement, which, by the way, it was supposed to be a Baltic magazine with the characteristic name “Almanac”.
In Soviet times, the “Pribaltika” returned, where sometimes the Kaliningrad region began to be worn. “Pribaltika” has remained in the narrow Russian discourse and cultural character as a sign of the specific goodness of the Russian Federation, back in the past.