post-Soviet Latvia Research Articles

Securing the Only Game in Town: The EU's Political Conditionality and Democratic Consolidation in Post-Soviet Latvia

The state of democracy in post-communist Europe has been subject to some debate in recent years; but it needs to take account of longer-term trends. The focus here is on how far the EU's political conditionality has contributed to democratic consolidation using an in-depth case study of post-Soviet Latvia. The record of the impacts of conditionality up to EU entry is examined and then attention turns to whether post-accession tendencies have demonstrated any significant changes after the end of Brussels' monitoring. Using a comparative framework, this article shows that the outcome after four years of EU membership is mixed with both positive and negative results. It is concluded that there is no automatic locking-in effect of European integration; and that conditionality assists democratic consolidation more in structural than in attitudinal or behavioural terms.

Which Minority is Appeased? Coalition Potential and Redistribution in Latvia and Ukraine

This article tests fiscal appeasement, needs-based and coalition potential hypotheses for redistribution in post-Soviet Latvia and Ukraine. I argue that the government's decision to reward a minority population depends on the coalition potential of minority parties and voters. In Latvia, the non-participation of minority parties in governing coalitions means that the distribution of spoils among coalition partners does not benefit the regions in which Russian speakers live. In Ukraine, on the other hand, voters and parties in western Ukraine have been sought out by Russian-speaking politicians from eastern Ukraine, and the districts of western Ukraine received preferential treatment as a result.

Book Review: Comparative and International Education: An Introduction to Theory, Method, and Practice, from Sites of Occupation to Symbols of Multiculturalism: Reconceptualizing Minority Education in Post-Soviet Latvia

Book Review: Comparative and International Education: An Introduction to Theory, Method, and Practice, from Sites of Occupation to Symbols of Multiculturalism: Reconceptualizing Minority Education in Post-Soviet Latvia

Flipping burgers or flipping pages? Student employment and academic attainment in post-Soviet Latvia

Latvian higher education has undergone a dramatic transition since 1991. This study employs a survey of nearly 1000 social science students studying in 13 different institutions in Latvia to consider the impact of the increase in the number of students who are working while studying. Evidence indicates employment has a strong and significant negative impact on school performance, and the negative impact increases as weekly hours worked increase. This manifests itself through reduced class attendance and reduced time spent in independent study. Finally, we find that the probability of student employment is most significantly affected by the availability of financial aid, gender, ethnicity, and age.

Problems, Solutions and Latvian Lawyers

Are Latvian lawyers up to the mark? How good are they with big problems and even bigger solutions in post-Soviet Latvia. The author asked this question to two leading commercially lawyers, Valters Gencs and Ugis Treilons, who practice in Latvia. As such the article takes the form of a commentary from them on the increasing internationalisation of legal services in this new European Union member state.

The Effects of Interethnic Contact on Ethnic Identity: Evidence from Latvia

A specialist on interethnic conflict investigates Russians and Latvians in post-Soviet Latvia to specify the conditions under which ethnic groups converge and diverge. The relationship between contact and identity is examined through the use of several kinds of demographic data, including data on school choice, mixed marriages, changes in registered "nationality," and emigration. The analysis is used to consider the effects of interethnic contact on ethnic identity and the issue of ethnic identity and change.

Book Review: Nationalism and Democratic Transition: The Politics of Citizenship and Language in Post-Soviet Latvia

Book Review: Nationalism and Democratic Transition: The Politics of Citizenship and Language in Post-Soviet Latvia

Gendered political subjectivity in post-soviet latvia

Political texts such as parties' pre-election programs, manifestos, slogans, or TV ads can be analyzed as narratives using multidisciplinary methods. Such an analysis can be especially beneficial in the political context of Latvia where the prevalent political rhetoric contains post-Soviet legacies, the impact of international integration and nationalist projects of ethnic isolationism. This article is based on a study of political documents of parties in Latvia and their story of what characterizes an empowered political subjectivity. It consists of three main themes—the family, the borders and the order. In all of them, the political subjectivity is masculinized and concentrated on developing various levels of social and political differentiation, especially ethnic and gender stratification. Such a political rhetoric leads to the exclusion from decision-making of women and other groups that do not fit prevalent characterizations of the political subjectivity.

The unfortunate generation: stroke survivors in Riga, Latvia

The poor health status of citizens in post-Soviet states has been reported but few studies have investigated the illness experiences of people in those countries. This paper reports findings from an interview study conducted with stroke patients in Riga, Latvia, who were part of a cohort recruited over 1 year for a European study comparing the provision of care, outcomes and resource use. The interview study aimed to elicit stroke patients’ own perceptions of the impact of stroke 1 year after the event. Adopting a phenomenological perspective we illustrate how the particular social setting shapes stroke as an illness, its influences on access to health care and on consideration of the impact of stroke. We argue that for stroke survivors and their relatives in post-Soviet Latvia this disorder acquires a meaning that transcends the individual biography and signifies an upheaval of social life in general. The meanings attributed to stroke by interviewees are developed in the context of the momentous recent historical events which participants lived through. In this sense, stroke has become an idiom of a disruption in social biography rather than individual biography alone. Most participants were pensioners and their main concern was their own poverty. Some complained of their inability to meet their basic needs, much less pay for on-going medication and therapy. Only one person was ‘severely disabled’, using a standard neurological definition, but about half of those interviewed regarded the stroke as a sign foretelling their own death. Although this generation had expected to be cared for in their older age under the Soviet regime, the much longed for Latvian independence was seen to have brought unexpected hardships for those who were old and sick.

The People's Party in Latvia: Neo-Liberalism and the New Politics of Independence

The political success of the neo-liberal People's Party in a mainly nationalist context of post-Soviet Latvia represents a development unpredicted by research. The previous analyses did not consider the importance of globalization and region's global aspirations in creating new social groups with different political interests. A variety of secondary sources, press materials, party documents and regional analysis show that the rise of the People's Party in 1998 is symptomatic of the potentially positive effect of international integration in Latvia. Concretely, the party's entry into the political scene signalled the end of the earlier, ethnic-oriented and nationalist political system, and the beginning of a more class-based politics.

The Manipulated Consensus: Globalisation, Local Agency, and Cultural Legacies in Post-Soviet Education Reform

At the end of the 1990s, Latvian minority education reform was characterised by extensive references to Western European models, including such concepts as ‘ethnic integration,’ ‘multiculturalism,’ and ‘bilingual education.’ Focusing on the conceptual development of the idea of ‘integration’ and its interpretation in the education sphere, this article examines the process whereby Western discourses became widely accepted locally. Emphasising the existence of a ‘hybridity’ of voices in a rapidly changing political context, this article maps out different interpretations of the new discourse by Latvian- and Russian-speakers, including their attempts to resist, modify, and create new meanings of ‘integration’ in post-Soviet Latvia.

Vieda Skultans. The Testimony of Lives: Narrative and Memory in Post-Soviet Latvia. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. xxxii. 217 pp. $75.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

Vieda Skultans. The Testimony of Lives: Narrative and Memory in Post-Soviet Latvia. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. xxxii. 217 pp. $75.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

The Cultural Bargain - Mark A. Jubulis: Nationalism and Democratic Transitio: The Politics of Citizenship and Language in Post-Soviet Latvia. (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2001. Pp. 416. $51.00.)

The Cultural Bargain - Mark A. Jubulis: Nationalism and Democratic Transitio: The Politics of Citizenship and Language in Post-Soviet Latvia. (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2001. Pp. 416. $51.00.)

Peeling Potatoes, Painting Pictures: Women Artists in Post-Soviet Russia, Estonia and Latvia. The First Decade. By Renee Baigell and Matthew Baigell. The Dodge Soviet Nonconformist Art Publication Series. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press and Thejane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, 2001. xiv, 170 pp. Notes. Chronology. Index. Photographs. $60.00, hard bound. $25.00, paper.

Peeling Potatoes, Painting Pictures: Women Artists in Post-Soviet Russia, Estonia and Latvia. The First Decade. By Renee Baigell and Matthew Baigell. The Dodge Soviet Nonconformist Art Publication Series. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press and Thejane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, 2001. xiv, 170 pp. Notes. Chronology. Index. Photographs. $60.00, hard bound. $25.00, paper.

Trope analysis of women’s political subjectivity

The article focuses on the narratives of women secretaries regarding their work experiences in private business in Latvia, and aims at understanding the barriers that prevent the formation of women’s political subjectivity in Latvia, by looking at why sexual harassment does not become a political issue for working women in Latvia. Using Hayden White’s theory of trope analysis, the article analyses the dominant tropes and the political results of their use in secretaries’ articulations and narratives about their experiences of sexual harassment. Additionally, the article provides a critical trope analysis of Western feminist theories of sexual harassment, thus pointing out their usefulness for women’s politics in Latvia. Finally, the article outlines the discursive strategies that women in Latvia could use in order to claim their own distinct and transformative political subjectivity in the newly independent, capitalist and highly nationalist post-Soviet Latvia.

Latvia's Russian minority: balancing the imperatives of regional development and environmental justice

Abstract This article examines the political, economic and social marginalization of Latvia's ethnic Russian minority in the post-Soviet era, and considers the impact of marginalization on both regional development and issues of environmental justice. I argue that demographic concentration of Russians in the region known as Latgale in southeast Latvia as well as the severe marginalization of this population has led to growing economic disparities in regional development since 1991. Contrary to expectations, however, the marginalization of ethnic Russians in Latvia does not appear to have led to increased environmental injustices relative to this group; based on an examination of siting decisions of new hazardous waste facilities in post-Soviet Latvia, I argue that industrial facilities commonly viewed as environmentally hazardous in advanced capitalist democracies hold quite different connotations in struggling transitional societies. Rather than the tendencies of growing regional underdevelopment and increased environmental discrimination reinforcing each other (as is commonly observed in developed capitalist societies), in these transitional societies the two tendencies appear to work in opposition to each other. In this article, I will investigate this unexpected relationship and highlight unique aspects of post-communist transitions that provide an explanation for this outcome.

Latvia's Liberal Party (LLP) in post-Soviet Latvia

The aim of this article is to look at one of the two parties in Latvia, whose ideology is classical liberalism. In the situation of the transition from totalitarianism to democracy the liberal ideas appeared to be unpopular to the majority of the population of Latvia, due to different difficulties linked to transition, both economical and psychological. The article gives a glance to the programme and internal problems of LLP.

Arguing with the KGB Archives. Archival and Narrative Memory in Post-Soviet Latvia

This paper is a sequel to my earlier work on life histories in post-Soviet Latvia. The opening of the KGB archives in Riga created the possibility of comparing archival information with recorded personal narratives. The files and the highly charged emotional responses that they evoked raise questions about the uses of language as it moves along a continuum from rigid formalisation to free poetic constructions. Excessive formalisation and institutionalisation of language preclude dialogue and rather than pin down meaning end up by destroying it. Nevertheless, informants were keen to engage in retrospective dialogue with the files, contesting facts and meanings and in the process subverting the original enterprise and reasserting themselves as moral agents.

The Testimony of Lives: Narrative and Memory in Post-Soviet Latvia. By Vieda Skultans. New York: Roudedge, 1998. xxi, 217 pp. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Plates. Map. $75.00, hard bound. $24.99, paper

The Testimony of Lives: Narrative and Memory in Post-Soviet Latvia. By Vieda Skultans. New York: Roudedge, 1998. xxi, 217 pp. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Plates. Map. 24.99, paper - Volume 57 Issue 4