“More than a third (37%) of Latvian residents consider themselves right-wing [..], but in reality, more than half (55%) of the Latvian population should be considered left-leaning.”
Worldview: self-assessment and reality. An ideological portrait of the Latvian population.
Populares Latvija/SKDS, March 2012

It is just as well that our politicians have such strong nerves. This thought involuntarily comes to mind when reading the results of the survey conducted by the conservative think tank Populares Latvija on the political values and worldviews of the population. To put it somewhat crudely, we can safely say that after 21 years of independence, the majority of the Latvian population wants the USSR back, perhaps only a USSR where ethnic Latvian nationalism fills the void left by Marxism-Leninism. As proof, a few telling figures: 53% support the nationalisation of all large companies; 56% agree that the state itself should build factories and create jobs; 55% support limiting human self-expression and freedom of speech in the name of law and order; only 25% believe that able-bodied people should not receive social assistance for long periods. Moreover, in all these matters, there are no fundamental differences between Latvians and Russians, or between voters of Vienotība and Saskaņa Centre. In short, hello there, Leonid Ilyich! Truly, given such figures, it is not easy to pretend to be European politicians who have left all the darkness of socialism in the past and are finally allowing the nation to enjoy all the fruits of liberal capitalism to the fullest.

The feeling is unsettling. Democracy, after all, is the rule of the majority. But if the majority were truly allowed to rule here, as the fans of our plebiscitary democracy wish, we would quickly end up in Belarus. So to speak, no freedom, but plenty of authoritarian egalitarianism, a state-run economy, collective farms and administratively set prices. However, one should not dramatise the situation. First of all, the majority is not the same in all cases. Those people who want the nationalisation of companies are not necessarily the same ones who want to censor the press and the internet. Secondly, the attitude towards various political issues is not biologically determined like the Rhesus factor. It is to a large extent a social construct, influenced not so much by a person's own well-considered deliberations as by things heard by chance, which in one way or another resonate with one's own experience. An interviewer does not enter into discussions with a respondent, but only offers a choice from pre-prepared answers, and if one were to talk a bit with the person interviewed, they would most likely look at things differently. The average person, nowhere in the world, is obsessed with politics – at least until the moment when politics begins to directly threaten them. Nor is the majority of Latvia's population made up of convinced authoritarian socialists, but rather people whose dissatisfaction with their current life, combined with an idealised Soviet experience and the populism of today's politicians, produces the corresponding result in the survey.

This is the right place to recall the words once said by the conservative Baltic German Paul Schiemann, that public opinion is merely an echo of how politicians shout in the forest. If you want people to support the free market, perhaps you shouldn't openly fish for votes with socialist populism – saying that the state will provide everyone with everything, just vote. But unfortunately, that is not how it happens in modern Latvia. Let us recall last March, when the Minister of Finance Andris Vilks, with the directness of a banker, accidentally remarked that “the state cannot go and coddle every single person”. Various “representatives of the public”, of course, pounced on him. But how many of his fellow politicians defended Vilks' statements? Not a single one; all our “caviar liberals” tucked their tails and kept their mouths shut, because not supporting state coddling is simply politically incorrect.

And so, in the end, Vilks even had to apologise, perhaps without even fully understanding what for. This incident is unfortunately symptomatic of a broader trend. The question of raising the retirement age has reached the status of pornography in our country – it may only be discussed in whispers and with wide-eyed shock. Against this background, the abnormally high labour taxes are just a trifle that can be solved sometime, somehow – just as long as the future pensioners are not touched. Furthermore, state benefits, often of negligible value, must be given to almost everyone – the famous eight lats should be a permanent monument to such “social justice”. What a surprise, then, that the citizens also echo this position of the elite.

This, of course, is not only Latvia's problem. In old Europe, the “welfare state” has for some time been redistributing income not by taking from the rich and giving to the poor, but by taking from those who “toil” and giving to those who do nothing. Opposing such an order will not make anyone popular. However, one might ask – why, despite such an unambiguously socialist public sentiment, have only “right-wing” governments been in power in Latvia so far? First of all, the Populares Latvija study confirms that people here understand “left-wing” and “right-wing” in a special way, not connecting it to the classical European division based on the interests of labour and capital. The vast majority of us consider themselves right-wing, yet in reality, they are left-wing. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that Latvian governments really have been right-wing in the classical sense of the word – low taxes on capital, high taxes on labour, privatising everything possible, keeping a rigid exchange rate, and implementing social policy only at a survival level. So why does the left-leaning Latvian citizen vote for such right-wing governments?

The answer must likely be sought outside the economic sphere. Latvian politics is very securitised; here, considerations of national security play a much greater role than those of economic efficiency. A low budget deficit and a stable exchange rate are not economic benefits in themselves here – they are entry tickets to Western security structures. For us, the EU does not primarily mean the free market; it means geopolitical belonging to the West. Even in the Eurozone (let's be honest), we do not primarily want to enter because of economic benefits. This securitisation can be fully understood – those neighbours of ours are the way they are. However, based on security considerations, capitalism in Latvia has been introduced, so to speak, by smuggling – without discussing it with anyone, without consulting, and without explaining anything.

The free market here is not good because it is efficient, relatively fair, allows individual enterprise to flourish, and promotes the well-being of the whole society in the long term. Neither politicians nor citizens think like that here – the Populares Latvija study shows this well. It is introduced because the free market is demanded of us by Brussels and Washington, without whom we would leave the Western orbit and end up who knows where. The only question is how much longer national security considerations will be able to serve as a source of legitimacy for the decisions of the elite. For a while yet, it will certainly hold. As for the well-being of society, things are a bit lacklustre, and one cannot expect any portion of legitimacy from that for the time being. On the other hand, Linderman and his like-minded fellows are a real godsend for all those who call on us to put up with our material grievances in the name of national security.
Article first published in the May 2012 issue of Rīgas Laiks magazine