A lot of buzz has been generated among
the Latvian twitterati by an essay by political scientist
Iveta Kažoka in her Latvian language blog on the website
www.politika.lv . Kažoka
contends that Latvia is no longer “a society in transition” (from
totalitarian socialism to...whatever?), but something else, showing
the seeds and potential for a better society. To be sure, she
asserts, there are significant hinderances to such development, but,
nonetheless, she is an optimist, if only Latvians (or Latvia's
inhabitants as a whole) were to change their mentality somewhat.
Kažoka writes, that after attending a
conference in Lithuania and getting around a bit elsewhere, she can't
accept that the “transition society” label applies to Latvia any
more:
Despite
that 10, 6 or 4 years ago, labeling Latvia as a transitional society
was almost automatic. It seems, intuitively, that in recent years the
use of this term has gradually faded. Today, when identifying
ourselves to an international audience, a more frequently heard
description is “new European Union member state” or “new
democracy”
It
seems to me that this change is not simply one of description and a
change of labels. It is the start of new thinking, a new paradigm
about our society, a new approach to life and development. From a
comparatively blind, unreflective construction of a desirable model
of governance and the copying of discourse to modeling governance
after one's own image and likeness (with individual borrowings from
those societies that are most successful in some area). To my mind,
this is the most significant change.
Kažoka goes on to say that one
characteristic of the change she perceives is that Latvians no longer
view other model societies uncritically, they see the flaws in such
places as Germany, Switzerland and Scandinavia. The political
scientist believes this can lead to a desire to do better in our own
way, rather than a “cynical relativism” that says that if the
Scandinavians have not fully eliminated corruption, it cannot be done
in Latvia.
Kažoka lists what she believes are the
good qualities of Latvian society, including:
-the
ability
to cope, adapt, change, search for and find compromises
-a
pragmatic ability to learn from their mistakes, having self-esteem,
involvement as values
-education
as a value
-a
growing intolerance for superficial glamour, Nordic modesty.
She
then discusses three negative characteristics that Latvians have to
overcome in order to advance along the path that she thinks is
opening up. She calls them “three reflexes of helplessness:.
-a
low level of mutual trust
that the political scientist and commentator describes as “tragic”
-a
culture of self-depreciating lamentation and “loser-ism”
-stagnant
conservatism and an inability to think outside the box
In
a rather upbeat ending to her post (perhaps my summary doesn't do it
justice, Latvian readers or those who wish to amuse themselves with
Google translate can check it out here) Kažoka writes:
I
have not hidden the fact in earlier posts that I am skeptical about
traditional development planning methods. I see some sense in them,
but I don't believe that they are a decisive factor in the faster or
slower development of a society. In my opinion, more important
processes take place in people's heads, in their perception of the
world, because it it is these that either encourage a person to
action in the hope of some achievements, or put a brake on doing
anything at all. In very general terms, things will be such as is our
attitude.
No
one can say for certain what the world will look like in 20 years. At
the same time, it is clear that the keys to success for a society in
this century are new technologies, the ability to learn and
cooperate, and inner freedom for creativity. Let us take this into
account and do everything so that people in Latvia will have these
keys. In my opinion, Latvia as a society presently has the
preconditions to become a society where people want to live (rather
than leave at the very first chance) if we deprogram ourselves from
three learned reflexes of helplessness (mistrust, “loser-ism” and
traditionalism) we can be at the very forefront of change.
The
Latvian saying “from your mouth to God's ear” is my first
reaction to Kažoka's post. But in more critical terms, I would ask –
does this analysis and possible future scenario fit the data? OK, I
am not a social researcher, Iveta is probably better trained on such
matters. The Eurobarometer
survey she mentioned to me in a Twitter exchange shows that 78% of
Latvians don't trust the government, 89% don't trust political
parties and 82% don't trust the parliament. If this isn't dismal,
perhaps it is better not to ever see dismal...
The
other data that I look at are emigration and is corollary,
depopulation. The region of Latgale has lost more than a fifth of its
population (21.1%), even Vidzeme, often regarded as a kind of Latvian
heartland, is down 17.5%. Among Latvia's cities, Daugavpils has lost
19.3% of its population since 2000, Rezekne is down 18,1% and even
the capital Riga has lost 14,2% of its inhabitants.
Admittedly
a lagging indicator, figures on the impoverishment of the nation from
2010 show that 46% of the Latvian population would be below the
poverty line but for various kinds of social welfare payments. That
could be considered a sign that the welfare system works in the
country, but at the same time, that people are unable to earn a
living wage in Latvia, hence the continuing emigration. Figures on
household disposable income show it had fallen by 20% in 2010
compared to 2008, the last year before the economic crisis struck
with full force.
There
is also a recent study by University of Latvia researchers showing
that the alleged Latvian love of work is a myth – the countryside
population in many places has sunk into a culture of existing at a
subsistence level on welfare and other transfer payments or doing
temporary subsidized day labor. A culture of heavy drinking and
alcoholism has also become endemic, with the result that employers –
farmers and small businesses – cannot find suitable workers. The
boozers and welfare dependents prefer their lifestyle to getting a
steady job with taxes and social fees paid.
Another
recently published “positive” figure is that the number of youth
unemployed age 15 to 24 has decreased at the end of 2011 by over 7
800 from the end of 2010. Somehow I don't think these people all got
jobs in Latvia. In fact, a fair guess is that most of them emigrated
and only a few found work or started their own enterprise in Latvia.
Unfortunately,
I don't think the data I see fits Kažoka's conditional optimism,
nor, for that matter, that her conditional optimism is based on the
data (unless she, whose day job is political analyses, facts, figures
etc., has seen other data sets that I haven't seen).
As
things stand, the paradigm for Latvia is stagnation (with some bright
islands of progress in the economy, like the IT start-ups that
gathered at the recent TechCrunch Baltics) and continued emigration
simply because it is so easy to find places that are better governed
than Latvia and where work is better paid and people better treated,
in general, than here. That just comes from the facts and figures, it
has nothing to do with whether I am a pessimist or optimist or
cheering for Latvia to do better. In a race where your favorite horse
is almost dead, it is this fact, not the cheering, that matters.
