The inhabitants held Latvian citizenship regardless of ethnicity. Parliamentary Latvia pursued a liberal policy of multiculturalism, guaranteeing education in minority languages from 1919. Modern schools providing bilingual instruction in Latvian, Russian, Belarusian, Yiddish and Latgalian were constructed (by 1936 there were 162 primary schools and 3 secondary schools in the district). The Latvianization policies of the authoritarian president Kārlis Ulmanis resulted in curtailing multiculturalism after 1934. Many minority schools were closed. The Abrene district as a whole differed from most of Latvia by religion, too – it was 48% Orthodox, 38% Catholic, and 12% Lutheran.