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Russian School Defense Staff or Headquarters for the Protection of Russian Schools (Russian: Штаб защиты русских школ; Latvian Krievu skolu aizstāvības štābs) — movement in Latvia for protection of public secondary education in Russian. Leaders: Gennady Kotov, Yakov Pliner, for some time also Alexander Kazakov (deported out of Latvia in 2004).

Annulation of the provisisons set in the Education law of 1998, which ordered the language of instruction in public secondary schools (Forms 10-12) to be only Latvian since 2004 (so-called reform-2004 or educational reform). Providing effective learning of Latvian language in the Latvian language and literature lessons and specific preparation of teachers for Russian schools.

The Staff was founded^[2] in April 2003 as a coalition of various organizations, most prominent being ForHRUL, and later expanded, involving lots of nonpartisan people. In 2003-2004, the Staff has organized the biggest political demonstrations in Latvia since the beginning of 1990-es (23 May and 4 September, 2003; 1 May and 1 September, 2004). As a result, the Education law was amended in February 2004, allowing to teach up to 40% in the forms 10-12 in minority languages. The parliamentary opposition started two cases before the Constitutional Court of Latvia (abjudicated in May and September, 2005) with most of its demands being refused.

1. ^ http://www.shtab.lv/main.php?w2=about
2. ^ "Ракурс" № 1/2003

• English
  • Chronicle of Staff actions 2003-2005 and List of the most considerable protests in 2004
  • Latvians face new wall: language (CNN, 2004)
  • Excerpts from Latvian-language press, May-June 2004 and RFE/RL news on Baltic minorities, January-April 2004
  • Teachers in crossfire over Latvia's school reform (Reuters, 2004)
  • Thousands of Russian speakers protest new school language rules (AP, 2004)
  • Latvian lessons irk Russians (BBC, 2005)
  • Judgements of the Constitutional Court on the "educational reform" and on private minority schools' rights to get public funding , 2005
  • Discussion in the European Parliament, 2005

• Russian and Latvian
  • Staff site, mostly in Russia
    • Staff's video archive;
    • Staff video clips: «Black Karlis» (the most famous one, referring to then-minister for education Karlis Shadurskis) and «Reform is fact», in Russian
  • Basic excerpts from Staff documents and links: Russian, Latvian
  • Official position on the reform, in Latvian