REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

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Remembrance in Time
distinctions. The three countries use different languages, the structure of the population is
different, especially related to ethnic minorities and they have differences laying in their
economic structure. Lithuania has a bigger agricultural sector than Estonia and Latvia.
The size of the population also differs immensely with Estonia as the smallest nation and
Lithuania as the biggest nation.
2. Social transition
The social transition, the structural changes of social relationships and characteristics of
the society, did not start at zero. The connection with the economic is very tight. The
societies of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were shaped by the interwar years 1918-1940
and the period of the soviet occupation 1940-1991. Many people hoped their countries
will experience a rapid growth, westernisation and economic adaption to Western Europe
in a very short period of time. But this turns out as a nice but unrealistic dream. The
transition process in the Central and Eastern European countries is characterized by a
complete restructuring that goes along with different kind of changes and insecurity [1].
Especially the negative implications of capitalism struck the people during this process
– unemployment, insecurity etc. The new situation is not shaped by state decreed equality
but the transition process leads to social stratification. After 20 years of independence and
more years of the economic transition process, the main question should not be how the
process works but what the results of this process are. Who belongs to the winners and
looser of this complex economic process? This discourse is very important as there is still
a threat that belonging to the group of looser could turn into a permanent situation for
these people. In the end it is possible to say that a stiffened group of loser turn into a kind
of social explosive that threatens the social stability of a society and the new adapted
democracy.
For unknown reasons, the state of the art is, that this question is rather rarely asked in
case of the Baltic States. One reason surely is that most of the scientists working on
Central and Eastern Europe refer to the ‘standard’ countries like Poland, Ukraine,
Hungary, Czech Republic and Russia. Research on Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania is still a
niche.
Therefore in the following chapters three questions should be of interest of this article:
1.) Who belongs to the winners and losers of the economic transition?
2.) Is it possible to define these groups based on empirical findings?
3.) What categorisation is possible?
I will start with the basic question of a general classification.
3. Definition of winners and losers
It is an odd conclusion, that every economic transition has winners and losers. For this
reason also in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania both groups appear on the scene after the
initiation of the transition and general downfall of the economy. At the beginning of the
transition nobody knows exactly who will become a winner or a loser of this process. The
most realistic way is a post-transition analysis in which slow social processes are
evaluated and conclusions are drawn, because the development of these groups need time
to develop. On the other hand, there is no closing definition of this problem. For this
reason, I try to define some characteristics of both groups.