Resurgence of post-crisis neoliberalism: labor law reform and the return to “business as usual” in Lithuania

ABSTRACT

The economic crisis of 2008–2010 revealed the extreme vulnerability of Lithuania to global financial shocks. However, instead of reforming Lithuanian capitalism, the domestic political and business elites chose to write off the enormous social and economic costs incurred during the 2008–2010 crisis as an expense of continuing doing business in a way that was typical to the pre-crisis, booming years of ‘the Baltic tigers’ (2000–2007), i.e., relying on the unstable and inequitable growth model based on foreign capital inflows and remittances, suppressing and keeping wages and taxes on capital low and exporting cheap-skilled labour to the core EU countries. We illustrate this return to business as usual in Lithuania by analyzing the political process of contestation and eventual consolidation of neo-liberal consensus among domestic political actors that resulted in the passage of the new Labour Code enabling creation of ‘flexible’ labor markets. Social and political implications of the resurgent neoliberal hegemony in post-crisis Lithuania are discussed.     

The Saracens of the Baltic: Pagan and Christian Lithuanians in the Perception of English and French Crusaders to Late Medieval Prussia

This paper investigates the use of the term ‘Saracens’ to describe the Lithuanian opponents of the Western crusaders who took part in expeditions launched from Prussia by the Teutonic Order against the grand duchy of Lithuania in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It presents a variety of evidence from narrative and documentary sources to demonstrate that this usage was derived from existing images of Muslim opponents and was reinforced by epic and romance literature. The use of the term Saracens, which by the fourteenth century had become a generic designation for pagans, was both a convenient way for Western crusaders to imbue the Prussian crusades with a value commensurate with campaigns in the Holy Land, but also to blacken their Lithuanian opponents even when they had abandoned paganism.     

(Ine)quality of life: Lithuanian labor migration to Sweden during the economic crisis and its aftermath, 2008–2013

ABSTRACT

This article connects micro and macro scales of inequality to Lithuanians’ decisions to depart to Sweden during the economic crisis with austerity measures and its aftermath (2008–2013). This period revealed unequal opportunities regarding the quality of life that were largely created by the gradual re-commodification of labor as well as unaddressed income and social inequalities which had existed since the 1990s. Nevertheless, macro inequalities did not directly lead to the exit decision. Rather, this was bound to the individual’s perception of the leaving opportunity and (possible) quality of life for oneself and one’s family across time and space.     

The Evolution of Innovation Policy Governance Systems and Policy Capacities in the Baltic States

This paper analyzes the evolution of innovation policy (IP) governance systems in the Baltic States and discusses how this progression has influenced the development of long-term IP capacities. The Baltics must attend to their long-term policy capacities as they are going through a ‘catch-up’ process while being influenced by both historical socioeconomic legacies and pressures of the global political economy. At the same time, they have delegated key policy activities away from centers of policy making and moved toward increasingly fragmented IP governance models, which provide narrow feedback and policy learning mechanisms that complicate the creation of long-term policy capacities.     

Bourgeoisie as internal orient in the Soviet Lithuanian literature: Roses Are Red by A. Bieliauskas, 1959

ABSTRACT

In this paper, the concept of internal colonization is applied to the Soviet initiatives of re-socializing the large parts of the population and creating a socialist working class from peasantry, artisans, and residues of the bourgeoisie. The internal colonization, or the power relations between native Communists and their subalterns in Lithuania, is analyzed on the basis of Roses Are Red, a novel by Bieliauskas. Here, class is invented as substitute of race. The Soviet socialists stand for hegemonic standards of “normalcy,” whereas bourgeoisie is portrayed as subject of difference, as internal Orient and as internal colony, and the relationship between the two can be legitimately defined as internal colonialism.     

“An orgy of licence?” Democracy and property redistribution in Poland and the Baltics in their international context, 1918–1926

The article argues that property redistribution was a major tool of democratization and nationalization in Poland and the Baltics. It provided governments with a means to give peasants a stake in the new democratic states, thus empower the new titular nations and at the same time marginalize former elites, who became national minorities. The most significant acts of property redistribution were the land reforms passed between 1919 and 1925, which achieved the status of founding charters of the new states. Activists of the disenfranchised minorities conceptualized minority protection as the “Magna Carta” of the international order, which should contain the principle of national self-determination and thus safeguard private property, the protection of which was not clearly regulated by international law. By examining the contingencies of the aftermath of the war in East Central Europe as well as discussions about changing conceptions of property ownership in both East Central and Western Europe, the article shows that land reform was meant to counter Bolshevism, but, at the same time, created the impression abroad that the new states themselves displayed revolutionary tendencies and did not respect private property – an image that became a significant argument of interwar territorial revisionists.     

Ethno-Political Effects of Suburbanization in the Vilnius Urban Region: An Analysis of Voting Behavior

We use electoral data to analyze the ethno-political consequences that may arise from the fact that the region surrounding the city of Vilnius is dominated by residents with a Polish identity, while those who move to the suburbs are mainly ethnic Lithuanians. In the suburban ring we found increasing voting turnout, a decreasing share of votes for the Polish party, and an increase of the absolute number of votes for this party. The changing electoral behavior might be an indicator of growing ethno-political tensions and the zones of the most intense changes identify areas of potential social tensions between ethnic groups.     

The economic output growth of Baltic countries in 1913–1938: a quantitative cross-country comparison

ABSTRACT

This article surveys and appends the available quantitative research on the interwar economic growth of Baltic countries to compare gross domestic product (GDP) (in 1990 Geary–Khamis dollars) growth in Estonia, Finland, Latvia, and Lithuania between 1913 and 1938 in a broad international context. Finland’s GDP per capita recovered to the 1913 level in 1923, in Estonia recovery was complete by 1922, in Lithuania by 1924, and in Latvia by 1924–1925. By high-end estimates, the growth performance of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania was not weaker than Finland’s. By 1938, the GDP per capita of all Baltic countries exceeded the level of the Soviet Union with the possible exception for Lithuania.     

First calculations of the total output of Latvia and Lithuania in the 1920s: a comparison

The contemporary system of national accounts (SNA) framework is used to compare the methodologies and to adjust the findings to allow for cross-country comparisons of the very first calculations of the total economic output of Lithuania in 1924 by Albinas Rimka (1886–1944) and of Latvia in 1925 by Alfrēds Ceihners (1899–1987). Ceihners’ notion of national income corresponds to the SNA concept of gross national income (GNI), while Rimka measured net national income (NNI). Rimka’s estimate has a downward bias, because he applied a fixed capital depreciation rate that was too high and did not include the value of noncommercial public sector services.     

The Polish–Lithuanian borderlands,past and present: multicultural versus decolonial responses to local and state violence

This article presents the case of the Suwa?ki Triangle region on the current Polish–Lithuanian border to demonstrate how local activists developed a “multicultural” interpretation of social relations to counter previously dominant nationalist narratives. It then contrasts this interpretation with a “decoloniality” framework to illustrate the limits of the multicultural approach. Decoloniality, developed by Walter Mignolo to theorize about Latin American historical experiences, finds continued hierarchies in the apparently plural social landscape, situates identity as a fluid response to these hierarchies, and privileges voices that are “delinked” from them. Decoloniality may explain the complex borderland identifications of the Suwa?ki Triangle – and potentially other territorialized communities – better than multiculturalism.