Between Plan and Market: Social Change in the Baltic States and Russia 9783110819397, 9783110150179

Table of contents :
Introduction
The Green Banana of the Baltic States — Obstacles to Capitalist Development
1 Introduction
2 Structural Preconditions
3 Legitimacy and Integration
3.1 The Lessons of the Case of Estonia
4 Social Structure
5 Research Strategies and Theories
Contextualizing Social Stratification in Comparative Research
1 Introduction
2 Sectors versus Fields
3 Bourdieu: Fields, Capital and Habitus
3.1 Social Fields
3.2 Capital
3.3 Habitus
4 “Bourdieu’s Model”
5 Bourdieu from a Structural Point of View
5.1 Power Resources on the Economic Field
5.2 The Development of the Economic Field
6 Concluding Remarks
The Beginning of the Working Class Movement in the Soviet Union and Post-Socialist Societies (1989-1991)
1 The Emergence and the First Steps of the Working Class Movement in the USSR
1.1 Polyfunctional Social-Political Organizations in the World of Labour
1.2 The Specific Bipolar Character of the Soviet Working Class Movement
1.3 Wage Labour and the Preconditions for the Working Class Movement in the Society of State Socialism
1.4 The Impossibility of a Legal Working Class Movement in the Framework of State Socialism
1.5 The July Strike of 1989
1.6 Wave-Like Growth in 1990-1991
2 Post-Communist Working Class Organizations
2.1 From Pseudo Trade Unions to Genuine Trade Union Organizations: Possibilities and Limitations in Transforming the Old Trade Unions
2.2 The Emergence and Development of New Trade Unions
2.3 The Size and Influence of Old and New Trade Unions: The Necessity of Trade Union Pluralism
3 Conclusions
3.1 Ideology and Anti-Ideology in the Working Class Movement
Social Change and Marginality in Today’s Russia
1 Introduction
2 Factors of Mobility in Contemporary Russia
The Emergence of Civil Society in Estonia 1987-1994
1 Introduction
2 The Widening of Public Space — The Emergence of the Fourth Estate
3 “Movement Society” and “Mass Opinion” Formation
3.1 Towards the Formation of “Public Opinion”
4 Party Formation and the Development of Civil Society
5 The Estonian State and Immigrants and Minorities
6 Legal Frames of Estonian Nation-Building and Immigrants’ Integration Options
7 Legal and Civil Integration Perspectives
8 Conclusions
Social Stratification under Privatization in Lithuania
1 Introduction
2 The Process of Privatization
3 Privatization of the Land
4 Social Strata According to Material Status
5 Unemployment
6 People’s Interests and Conflicts
The Privatization of Agriculture and the Family Farm Ideology in the Baltic States
1 Introduction
2 The Structural, Ideological and Juridical Background of the Present Land Reform
3 The Family Farm Ideology and the Historical Conditions for the Rise of the Peasant State
4 Agricultural Petty Production During the Socialist Period
5 A Short-Term Alternative: A Backward System of Plot Farming
6 The Preconditions for a New Family Farm Project in the Baltic States
7 On the Long-Term Prospects
Women and Rural Development in Contemporary Estonia
1 The Background
2 Women as Farmers and Farm Wives
3 Connections
4 Losers
5 Conclusion
Notes on Contributors

Citation preview

Between Plan and Market

Societies in Transition 6

The aim of this series is to document the processes of economic, political, social, and cognitive changes in the societies of the former Eastern bloc, and the effect these changes had. So historically unusual a situation also presents a challenge to the social sciences themselves. The intent behind the volumes in this series is to provide an analysis of these transformation processes that will prove of interest not just for social scientists, but for a wider readership as well. More grandly, perhaps, we hope with these studies to make a substantial contribution to describing and explaining social change.

Editors Prof. Dr. Hartmut Esser, Mannheim Prof. Dr. Jürgen Friedrichs, Cologne Prof. Dr. Max Kaase, Mannheim

Between Plan and Market Social Change in the Baltic States and Russia

Editors Raimo Blom Harri Melin Jouko Nikula

w G DE

Walter de Gruyter Berlin · New York · 1996

Raimo Blom, Professor of Sociology, University of Tampere, Department of Sociology and Social Psychology, Tampere, Finland Harri Melin, Assistant Professor, University of Tampere, Department of Sociology and Social Psychology, Tampere, Finland Jouko Nikula, Assistant Professor, University of Tampere, Department of Sociology and Social Psychology, Tampere, Finland With 25 tables and 1 figure © Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication

Data

Between plan and market : social change in the Baltic States and Russia / edited by Raimo Blom, Harri Melin, Jouko Nikula. p. cm. — (Societies in transition ; 6) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 3-11-015017-4 (alk. paper) 1. Baltic States — Social conditions. 2. Russia (Federation) - Social conditions - 1991- 3. Social change - Baltic States. 4. Social change — Russia (Federation) 5. Postcommunism - Baltic States. 6. Post-communism - Russia (Federation) 7. Baltic States - Economic conditions. 8. Russia (Federation) — Economic conditions — 1991— I. Blom, Raimo. II. Melin, Harri. III. Nikula, Jouko. IV. Series. HN539.6.A8B48 1996 306'.09474-dc20 95-49787 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek — Cataloging-in-Publication

Data

Between plan and market : social change in the Baltic States and Russia / ed. by Raimo Blom ... — Berlin ; New York : de Gruyter, 1996 (Societies in Transition ; 6) ISBN 3-11-015017-4 NE: Blom, Raimo [Hrsg.]; GT

© Copyright 1996 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-10785 Berlin All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in Germany. Printing: WB-Druck, Rieden am Forggensee. — Binding: Dieter Mikolai, Berlin. - Cover Design: Johannes Rother, Berlin.

Acknowledgements

This book has been researched and written in the context of an ongoing research project called Social Change in the Baltic and Nordic countries. The project involves an extensive network of researchers from Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden. It is funded by the Nordic Social Science Research Council (NOS-S). We wish to thank all the people who are engaged in the project as well as NOS-S for their generous grant towards the editing and technical preparation of this book.

Contents

Introduction

1

The Green Banana of the Baltic States — Obstacles to Capitalist Development Raimo Blom, Harri Meliti, Jouko Nikula

7

1 2 3 4 5

Introduction Structural Preconditions Legitimacy and Integration 3.1 The Lessons of the Case of Estonia Social Structure Research Strategies and Theories

7 8 11 13 16 20

Contextualizing Social Stratification in Comparative Research Hâkon Leiulfsrud, Peter Sohlberg

27

1 2 3

27 30 32 33 34 35 36 38 40 44 47

4 5

6

Introduction Sectors versus Fields Bourdieu: Fields, Capital and Habitus 3.1 Social Fields 3.2 Capital 3.3 Habitus "Bourdieu's Model" Bourdieu from a Structural Point of View 5.1 Power Resources on the Economic Field 5.2 The Development of the Economic Field Concluding Remarks

VIII

The Beginning of the Working Class Movement in the Soviet Union and Post-Socialist Societies (1989-1991) Leonid Gordon 1

2

3

The Emergence and the First Steps of the Working Class Movement in the USSR 1.1 Poly functional Social-Political Organizations in the World of Labour 1.2 The Specific Bipolar Character of the Soviet Working Class Movement 1.3 Wage Labour and the Preconditions for the Working Class Movement in the Society of State Socialism 1.4 The Impossibility of a Legal Working Class Movement in the Framework of State Socialism 1.5 The July Strike of 1989 1.6 Wave-Like Growth in 1990-1991 Post-Communist Working Class Organizations 2.1 From Pseudo Trade Unions to Genuine Trade Union Organizations: Possibilities and Limitations in Transforming the Old Trade Unions 2.2 The Emergence and Development of New Trade Unions 2.3 The Size and Influence of Old and New Trade Unions: The Necessity of Trade Union Pluralism Conclusions 3.1 Ideology and Anti-Ideology in the Working Class Movement

Contents

53 53 53 57 58 61 63 65 69 69 72 77 79 79

Social Change and Marginality in Today's Russia Michail Chernish

85

1 2

85 86

Introduction Factors of Mobility in Contemporary Russia

The Emergence of Civil Society in Estonia 1987-1994 Rein Ruutsoo

97

1 2 3

97 98 98 100 105 113 114 116 119

4 5 6 7 8

Introduction The Widening of Public Space — The Emergence of the Fourth Estate "Movement Society" and "Mass Opinion" Formation 3.1 Towards the Formation of "Public Opinion" Party Formation and the Development of Civil Society The Estonian State and Immigrants and Minorities Legal Frames of Estonian Nation-Building and Immigrants' Integration Options Legal and Civil Integration Perspectives Conclusions

Social Stratification under Privatization in Lithuania Meilute Taljunaite 1 2 3

Introduction The Process of Privatization Privatization of the Land

123 123 123 130

Contents 4 5 6

Social Strata According to Material Status Unemployment People's Interests and Conflicts

The Privatization of Agriculture and the Family Farm Ideology in the Baltic States Ilkka Alanen 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Introduction The Structural, Ideological and Juridical Background of the Present Land Reform The Family Farm Ideology and the Historical Conditions for the Rise of the Peasant State Agricultural Petty Production During the Socialist Period A Short-Term Alternative: A Backward System of Plot Farming The Preconditions for a New Family Farm Project in the Baltic States On the Long-Term Prospects

Women and Rural Development in Contemporary Estonia Ray Abrahams 1 2 3 4 5

The Background Women as Farmers and Farm Wives Connections Losers Conclusion

Notes on Contributors

IX 133 135 138

141 141 141 146 149 153 157 160

169 170 171 175 177 178

181

Introduction

This collection of articles is the second product of the project on "Social Change in Baltic and Nordic Countries", which explores the problems of transition mainly in the Baltic region. The project is concerned with the changes that are happening in this region in the class structure and work organization, in issues of ethnicity, culture and civil society. Problems of social networks and the different forms of capital, as defined in Bourdieu's sense, are also covered in the project. The articles in this volume are revised versions of papers presented at the seminar "Social Change in Baltic Countries", which was held on December 2-4,1993, at the University of Tampere. In their introductory article Nikula, Blom and Melin provide a preliminary discussion of the theoretical and methodological issues that are relevant to future research within the project. They begin by probing into the prospects for and obstacles to development towards "normal capitalism" in the Baltic states, maintaining that there is no short-cut to capitalism, but there must exist certain preconditions before the goal can be achieved. These include personally free wage labourers, the separation of the state and civil society, the development of institutions of regulation and a hegemonic moral code. Most Baltic countries are characterized by the lack or the uneven development of these preconditions, although there are clear differences between the countries in this respect. The ongoing rationalization of the social and economic institutions is reflected in the difficulties encountered in these countries in reforming the economic base as well as in the unfolding authoritarian mode of reform politics. This means that legitimacy is based more on an economic policy which is guided by supranational institutions favouring a policy of de-statization by dismantling state ownership and systems of state-sponsored distribution of welfare and subsidies. The policy of de-statization is based on a mode of legitimation in which the key word is legality, i.e. a repudiation of

2

Introduction

the socialist past which is seen as illegal. A t the level of nation-building this implies an exclusion of "aliens" from the nation. The authors further argue that new social divisions will become increasingly important as the old basis of legitimation erodes way, including such structures and certainties as the problems of gender, labour market and class. In many ways the process of privatization is of primary importance for the future development of the Baltic states — that will influence the direction and pace of class formation, the nature of labour relations and the role of different social groups. In terms of class relations, the process has thus far created a basis for urban entrepreneurs and professional middle classes, but the formation of a national bourgeoisie has turned out to be a far more complicated issue. For the political elites in the Baltic states, the role of the middle classes seems to be crucial and many of the current "projects" are directed towards the creation of the preconditions for the development of a large middle class. The authors nevertheless call into question the feasibility of such a project which requires a more mature social order than the Baltic states currently provide for. It is concluded that the path of development for the Baltic states is by no means predetermined; before any final conclusions can be drawn we need to do multi-layered empirical analyses using different kinds of research strategies and data sets. In addition, we need fresh sociological theorization and evaluations of standard conceptions. Sohlberg and Leiulfsrud set out in their article to outline a perspective on stratification that has its point of departure in the notion of power resources, to create an approach that is sensitive to the complexities and dynamics of those power resources. They also emphasize the importance of contextuality, to which they say Pierre Bourdieu's theory of social fields has given the most systematic contribution. Sohlberg and Leiulfsrud observe that Bourdieu's theory should be complemented with an analysis at the structural level as well as in the economic domain. For the analysis of economic power resources, they argue, Erik Olin Wright's analysis of the economic forms of capital provides a useful comprehensive complement. In this connection Sohlberg and Leiulfsrud emphasize the importance of negative power resources on the one hand and assets on the other; gender, race, ethnicity, or class influence the inclusion in or the exclusion from social fields and must therefore be described and explained. They argue that both Bourdieu and Wright fail to do this. They also argue for a more determined approach to the analysis of social space by taking economic power resources as a starting point in analysing the position of the various social groups. This includes the study of the ways of converting social and symbolic capital into economic power resources, as well as the impact of non-economic power resources on the respective fields. The analysis must also work to uncover the connections between social fields and their value in society. The

Introduction

3

resource perspective requires two things: an analysis in time and knowledge about the underlying operational logics. These preconditions must be taken into account in the project's research strategy. The authors conclude that this kind of approach is highly relevant in the context of the transition taking place in the Baltic post-socialist countries. Leonid Gordon discusses the birth of a new working class movement in Russia. Gordon's argument is grounded in the different nature of the tradeunion movement in Russia compared with its western counterpart. In capitalist countries labour movements are characterized by trade unionist consciousness; the corresponding political organizations follow in their wake. In Russia, the situation is completely different, Gordon argues, because "normal" capital-labour relations are still to develop in Russia. On the other hand, the consciousness of the members of the working-class movement contains both remnants of the state-socialist period and some elementary forms of normal trade-unionist views. In short, the argument is that it was not possible for a real worker movement to develop under socialism, which only saw ephemeral bursts of activity. But as soon as state socialism lost its grip over society, the worker movement began to burgeon. The rapid growth of the Russian worker movement was made possible by the rapid decline and collapse of socialism, which also explains the contradictory elements in the consciousness of the elites of the worker movement. This, according to Gordon, affects our understanding of the nature and the goals of the worker movement in the post-socialist period. The movement in general is characterized by bipolarity. The totalitarian nature of state-socialist society, which limits the possibilities of workers to represent and to promote their interests, creates an interest in abolishing etatism and in promoting the establishment of market and political freedom. According to Gordon, the worker movement in post-socialist society has an integral socio-political and social nature which can be traced back to state-socialist society where all spheres of society were integrally linked together. This, he says, explains the nature of the worker movement in Russia during 1989-1992: in order to effectively promote the interests of workers it was necessary to undermine or destroy state-socialist society. Gordon acknowledges that anti-totalitarianism is not an overwhelmingly general feature of the worker movement in Russia, but there does exist various forces and contradictory interests. Gordon refers to the transitory nature of the social situation as a main cause for such diversity; socialism collapsed in unanticipated swiftness, like a snowslide, says Gordon, and what remains is a kind of social vacuum. This social situation is creating social problems, which are either attributed to an incomplete shift to market society or to the abandonment of socialist principles.

4

Introduction

The opposite poles of the consciousness of different fractions of the worker movement can be characterized as follows: on the one hand there is an anti-totalitarian, anti-communist and bourgeois-democratic elite and on the other hand an anti-capitalist, communist and nationalist elite. In-between, there are various combinations of both forms. Gordon is convinced that this plurality is only a transient feature, a natural and inevitable part of the transition period. Michail Chernich shows in a very elegant way how the social structure of Russia has remained largely unchanged despite all the talk about market economy and rapid social changes. Chernich is concerned in his article with the patterns and factors of marginality in Russian society, which he sees as stemming from four principal sources: the change of industrial structure, the changes in ownership relations, the growth of social tensions and finally the overall change, which produces disintegrative tendencies in the social structure. Analysing mobility patterns with log linear models, Chernich points out that the main social groups have retained their sources of recruitment and also their traditional patterns of social closure. When Chernich discusses the new social groups in Russian society — entrepreneurs and the unemployed, he manages to highlight the relevance of the notion of different forms of capital and their convertibility to understanding social changes in post-socialist countries. In conclusion, Chernich argues that the processes of marginalization, which give rise to various strategies of survival, creates "several worlds, none of which is real and lasting". It signifies the nebulous character and direction of the changes and re-emphasizes the need to employ different methods of research in the analysis of transition in order to create trustworthy conceptualizations about the ongoing transition. Rein Ruutsoo analyses the development of civil society and political culture in Estonia from various angles. Ruutsoo sees the role of the media as crucial in the breaking away from the censorship and repression of opinion that existed during the Soviet era. The liberation of the media exposed the alienation and division of Estonian citizenry into two separate communities. These two communities are also separated in relation to the media: Estonian media do not give Russians the possibility to follow the media in their native language and are therefore compelled to orientate towards Russia. However, Ruutsoo argues that the media play a critical role in reducing ethnic tensions by lessening the social and linguistic isolation of the Russian community. In the development of the political system, Ruutsoo identifies three separate stages: quasi-charismatic, ideological and pragmatic. In the first stage a central role was played by the Communist Party, which strived to represent itself as a charismatic Party, articulating the interests of all members of society. This representation also included some reforms which enhanced political and social liberties by allowing the formation of civic organizations

Introduction

5

and social movements. The ideological stage was characterized by a struggle over the "hegemonic discourse" that would direct the development of Estonian society after the Communist Party lost its monopoly of power. At that stage the leading force was represented by intellectuals and their various political groupings. The pragmatic stage meant a withdrawal of intellectuals from the avant-garde politics and formation of parties on narrow, specific social and political interests. This is causing continued fragmentation of the political field and inability to form lasting political coalitions and reliable reform politics. The last section of Ruutsoo's article discusses alternative solutions to ethnic issues in Estonia. Ruutsoo acknowledges the social and historical traumas of both ethnic communities, but he considers it necessary to pursue such a policy that will promote the integration or adaptation of the Russian community into Estonian society because none of the alternative solutions are socially or economically feasible. Meilute Taljunaite explores in her article the preconditions for social change in Lithuania and its outcomes. She argues that the main obstacles to reasonable reforms are the underdeveloped legal system, conflicting political and social interests and shortcomings in the legislative system. She also argues that the roots of the social crisis in Lithuania lie in the disorganized nature of the political system and in the ineffective economy, which provide different social groups with unequal power resources. Like the other postsocialist countries, Lithuania has proceeded swiftly with the process of privatizing former state property. However, different groups are unequally placed to benefit from privatization, and Taljunaite argues that this is set to result in a widening gap between ownership and wealth. Another problem is the uncertainty that continues to surround the procedures and results of the privatization process. This, in turn, may lead in the long run to social conflicts. The privatization process also lays the foundation for the emergence of new social classes, such as entrepreneurs, farmers or wage working middle classes. According to Taljunaite, there are already signs of professional and social organizations growing up, although these are still dominated by political issues and within them social activity has been rather sloppy. So the key question is the maturity of civil society and the political system in general: if these remain underdeveloped, there will also remain the risk of one-party domination, which will result in political isolation and atomization of the rest of society. Ilkka Alanen analyses privatization and restitution programmes which form the basis of the reconstruction of agriculture in all Baltic countries. The reconstruction relies on the idea of family farms. Alanen argues that the preconditions for such a programme are not there because farmers in the Baltic countries lack the economic, technical and cultural capital to become family farmers. Analysing the prospects of Baltic agriculture from the point

6

Introduction

of view of development theories, Alanen predicts that the most likely result will be the dualization of the economy. Some sectors will be capable of developing into well-functioning, modern parts of the economy with extensive export activities. The role of agriculture will be to provide a substitute source of living for that part of the rural population who lack the resources to run an agricultural enterprise. Farming land and agricultural production will be concentrated in a handful of large farms, while the majority of the new farmers will be in a marginal position. Ray Abrahams' article provides a complementary, empirical view to the previous article. Abrahams discusses the role of women in new family farms from a social-anthropological perspective. The data he uses have been collected in a few Estonian villages during 1991 and 1992. Abrahams notes that female farmers are treated as equals by male farmers and that women also have an equal position on family farms. Full-time farming is not common, but he notes that many families are engaged in other activities in addition to farming. In general Abrahams is not very optimistic about the future of family farming because of rising costs, insufficient machinery and qualifications.

The Green Banana of the Baltic States — Obstacles to Capitalist Development Raimo Blom, Harri Meliti, Jouko Nikula

1

Introduction

Research on Eastern European, Baltic and ex-Soviet states has relied mainly on two key concepts, i.e. post-socialism and transition. Both of these concepts point very clearly at a state of affairs that may be described as "in-between"; there is a movement going on from something old towards something new. The justification of these concepts lies precisely in the fact that we do not know exactly where we are coming from and where this development is leading to; all we do know is that almost everything is changing. Up until now the concept of transition or post-socialism itself has been used in a rather loose and ambiguous manner; all existing problems are defined as deriving from the process of transition. But what does the concept of transition actually describe or explain? Three alternative interpretations can be traced for the concept of transition: First, transition as a stage in a linear development from a "less developed" form of society towards "more developed" forms. This is the understanding of most traditional modernization theories as well as of theories which regard transition as an effort to catch up the "modernization defect" (see Muller 1991; Berger 1992). Secondly, transition can be defined as an interlude between two qualitatively different social orders. In this sense the concept of transition is merely an analogue because the construction of capitalism in post-socialist countries is taking place under completely different historical conditions and on completely different premises than was the case in the 18th and 19th centuries. Third and finally, transition can be seen as a fairly stable formation which follows a logic of development all its own. Since the debate and the research on this issue still remains very much open, we want to take a less ambitious perspective on this concept here. That is, we consider it as a "negative determinant", without any fixed position or statements with regard to the direction or outcome of the development. However, we consider it necessary to emphasize the divergent nature of

Raimo Blom, Hani Melin, Jouko Nikula

8

transition in individual countries: the transition in the Baltic states is different from that in Eastern European countries, and also from that in Russia. The differences in the pace and nature of transition are to be found in the economic structure, political traditions, geographical location and to some extent also in the cultural traditions of the country. One could argue that within Eastern Europe there are at least two groups of countries in respect to the nature of transition: on the one hand there are countries like Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic where the transition process is characterized by "shock therapy" in both the economic and political spheres (at least to begin with), and these countries, located near the western markets, have rather solid industrial traditions. On the other hand, there are countries like Bulgaria, Albania, Rumania and Slovakia, where the transition process has thus far been rather sluggish and characterized by many political and economic struggles and backlashes. These countries have been predominantly agrarian and located closer to eastern or Soviet "markets". As far as the Baltic states are concerned, they bear some resemblance to both groups, Estonia coming closer to the first group in the sense that it has pursued very rapid and radical economic and political reforms, while Lithuania has now moderated its reforms and moved towards the second group. Latvia lies somewhere in-between. Even though all the three Baltic countries were part of the Soviet Union, their departure from that heritage has been very clear in almost every sphere. In the discussion below we shall be trying to compare the differences between the Baltic countries and Russia in relation to their respective transition strategies and the problems that are unfolding in the process.

2

Structural Preconditions

This perspective implies that we will be looking at the problems of transition at a more general level. The question we have is: are there any "planned" short-cuts to capitalism? And the answer is: no, there are no short-cuts. The transition of the Baltic states must be analysed from a broader perspective, approaching their development as a project of (re)building the nation. It is important to recognize that support for parliamentary democracy and the building of a privatized economy are not sufficient conditions for this project. It also requires free wage labourers, the separation of the state and civil society, and the development of institutions of regulation and a hegemonic moral code.

The Green Banana of the Baltic States

9

It is clear then that the preconditions for a "true" capitalist society are not yet there in the Baltic states, but they are characterized by a lack or underdevelopment of regulatory institutions and hegemonic moral codes. At the beginning of the independence era the hegemonic discourse was independence. Since then hegemony has been sustained by three parallel projects: the building of the nation state, market economy and political democracy. It seems that the hegemonic project of the nation state has been approved since no alternatives have been presented by other political forces. However, it is reasonable to argue that the hegemony appears more at a discursive level (Jessop 1988) than is real. This argument can be justified by reference to information concerning the continuing significance of a shadow or a second economy both in people's everyday life as well as in the operational reality of business companies. The fact that the regulative institutions or structures still remain incomplete is also seen in the lack of legislation: according to the Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs, for example, there is as yet no company law, credit institutions law, law on trade and commerce, law on exchange, etc., all of which are crucial to the proper functioning of market economy. There is every reason to assume that the situation is very similar in the other Baltic states. The creation of a functioning economic and political system also requires changes in cultural and normative socio-cultural practices, which comprise enterprise, civic, discursive and everyday cultures and practices (Stzompka 1993). Stzompka includes in enterprise culture rational calculation, innovation and achievement orientation instead of ascriptive practices. In civic culture he includes political activism, rule of law, discipline and respect for opponents, among many other issues. Similar aspects are included in discursive culture; tolerance, openness, pluralism and scepticism are indispensable parts in this regard. Finally, according to Stzompka everyday culture includes punctuality, orderliness, neatness and specific technical expertise. In this sense Stzompka's list resembles qualities that are thought to be typical of a "Fordist" way of life, but also features of formal rationality, which Weber (1970) saw as characteristic of capitalist societies. On the other hand, the development of these institutions and norms is effectively thwarted by the remnants of the previous social order. According to Stzompka (1993), Stojanovic (1993) and Srubar (1991), the socialist form of modernization produced a kind of "fake modernity" where the emphasis was on industrialization and technical advancement and which denied other features of modernity, such as pluralist political structure, the development of civil society and above all, the development and functioning of market mechanisms. These were replaced by political control and guidance. The strategy pursued by the political elites in the Baltic states is precisely to try and get rid of these remnants (denying and disbanding them is not

10

Raimo Blom, Hani Melin, Jouko Nikula

necessarily wise, since that would merely reproduce the political practices of their predecessors), to substitute economic rationality with political strategy. Habermas (1992) has coined the term "rectifying revolutions" to describe the political philosophy or strategy in most of the post-socialist countries of Eastern Europe. The point is that the basic premise of the revolution is to get rid of the past, without any clear vision or strategy about the future (see also Szelenyi, Szelenyi 1994). This is evident, for instance, in the project of family farms in Baltic countries, which does not make very much sense in either economic or cultural terms. The lack or underdevelopment of regulatory institutions and norms is reflected in the uneven development of society and its distortions: the degradation of social morality (increasing levels of crime), the rapid accumulation of wealth on the one hand and mounting poverty on the other. Another big issue in this context is the role of the state. Since the collapse of socialism, many countries have been pursuing a policy of "de-statization", getting rid of state-ownership and systems of state-sponsored welfare and subsidies. The aim has been to encourage "private initiative and responsibility". In this project the political elites of post-socialist countries have been backed by international organizations like the IMF, the World Bank, etc. One example of this type of project is the creation of private family farms as a basis for agricultural production in the Baltic countries. There are various justifications and rationales for these projects; political (the reconstitution of pre-Soviet society), moral (the change of work and social ethos), psychological (freeing people from "state-dependency"), economic (relieving the state's burden), etc. However, the message coming across from surveys and polls is loud and clear: even though the people generally accept privatization and understand what it will bring in its wake, they are not willing to accept a total dismantling of the structures of welfare or public economy. Recently even experts from the IMF and the World Bank have been diluting their anti-state programmes. Even now political elites in post-socialist countries have been pushing forward with ultra-liberal policies; and since the political field remains highly fragmented, they have faced little serious opposition. But as we have seen in Lithuania, Poland and Hungary, the political consequences may prove to be very serious indeed for the present political elite. This raises the question of the relationship between the rulers and the ruled: how much real influence and weight does civil society carry in post-socialist countries? Governments are now setting out their political goals against the will of those who will be most affected by their decisions. In this respect the analysis by Stuart Hall (1988) of the "authoritarian populism" of Thatcherite government seems very appropriate in the case of the Baltic states, too. The project leads to a strengthening of the state and, at a different level, to a neglect of civil society.

The Green Banana of the Baltic States

11

From a different point of view the role of the state in the development of post-socialist countries is far from self-evident: in the effort to reform their economies, the political elites in the Baltic countries (as well as in other post-socialist countries) have been emphasizing the importance and role of foreign capital, offering them rather favourable conditions. So far the foreign investments have not provided any significant boost to domestic production, but they have served mainly the interests of the investors. In a sense, the economy is showing a tendency towards disarticulation: on the one hand there is a fairly successful export industry which draws on foreign investments, and on the other dwindling domestic production. The development of the Baltic countries in this respect is not predetermined, but depends on the size and the structure of the developed sector and on its interaction with the less developed sector. In earlier decades the Baltic states differed from one another in terms of their industrial structure: Lithuania was a predominantly agrarian country, Latvia a producer of hi-tech equipment and natural resources, while Estonia had a more diversified industrial structure. These differences will obviously affect the prospects of these countries to transform their production in such a way that they can meet the requirements of market economy. However, as all other countries in the world the Baltic states will of course be dependent on the structures of the global economy. The former dual dependency of East European countries on the Soviet Union will be replaced by a dependency on multinational economic and political institutions. Therefore a total retreat to "market-politics" is not a feasible solution in this situation. This can be seen in the success of many NICs, which has been based on governmental systems and strategies of direction, including the control of the movements of foreign and domestic capital.

3

Legitimacy and Integration

As we saw in the first section, the main message of the stories of Eastern and Central European transition from socialism to capitalism is that "it's a hard road". The transition to market society can only succeed if the necessary economic and political preconditions are there. The former include demands of capital, economic infrastructure, and institutions and societal (state) regulation of the economy. The latter include hopes of a mature legal-state and citizenship, well-developed democratic institutions both in the public sphere and in civil society, and a high legitimacy of political decisions based on these institutions.

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Raimo Blom, Harri Melin, Jouko Nikula

In the Baltic states the work to build up the institutional arrangements of market economy and democracy is proceeding at a different pace. In the literature on East European transition, there is much disagreement about the magnitude, the timing and the sequence of the reforms, about the role of the state as a midwife of a new capitalist society, and about the nature of the political power most suitable for the realization of this transition (see Keren, Ofer 1992). The basic choices of the transformation are a "big bang" versus a moderate sequence of reforms, far-reaching market liberalism versus a significant regulatory-intervention role of the state, and democratic versus authoritarian political power. The main problem of the transition is not perhaps any one of these, but the collision of the structural principles of market society and political democracy during the transitory phase. So following the model of the "Four Tigers" of the Pacific rim, the question is whether the successful transition to capitalism needs more authoritarian political regimes (see Brucan 1992). Under authoritarian government, acceptance of the prevailing power relations between the rulers and the ruled and the justification of the common rules needed by the legitimacy of power (Beetham 1991: 16) is going to be difficult to achieve. The demands of a harmonious process of transition are complex and contradictory. From an "integration perspective", social integration and system integration are hardly supportive of one another. If social integration focuses on actors and their cooperative or conflictual relationships and system integration on institutions and the compatibility of different structural logics, the time schedules of their changes are very different (Lockwood 1964; Mouzelis 1991; for the concepts of integration, legitimacy and regulation, see Blom 1993). Difficulties in social integration may arise from two main sources: first, from insufficient and inadequate experience and knowledge about the systemic change attempted; and second, from the increasing separation of market reform, social security and welfare, and so on. Weakening system integration, then, acts to undermine social integration. Time is a very decisive element. If the (hegemonic) societal projects change rapidly and results are slow to come, there is bound to be increased insecurity. In Rein Ruutsoo's article the main question concerns the legitimacy of power and social change in Estonian society. His analysis and argumentation is a historical one, grounded both in rapid changes since 1990 and in the sequence of the periods of First Independence, Soviet rule and Second Independence. The problem of legality is at once a question of social integration. In the process of restoring independence and in its immediate aftermath, the basic principle of legitimacy and social integration, Ruutsoo says, was legality. Legality represented the historical contrast to the period of Soviet rule which

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was marked by illegality. This aspect of legality provided the opportunity to knit together different kinds of historical memories and experiences (in the sense of Erlebnis). This was then not only the principle of legality in a formal sense, but also in the sense of historical socio-existential justice. As a principle of social integration, legality also has its future-oriented aspects, the most important of which is the legal-state. State power is legally supported. The state, as a centralized societal power, is explained and legitimized through the law. State power is the general will, which includes basic rights and duties of citizenship as universal and equal rights. In relation to this, the well-known pillars of the legitimacy of the second phase market efficiency and the building a nation-state as an "imagined community" (Anderson 1983) were quickly appearing.

3.1

The Lessons of the Case of Estonia

In the discussion that follows we will be looking at some of the problems that are involved in maintaining legitimacy and in attaining social integration in Estonian society. We then move on to make a few comments that are relevant to the development of the theory of legitimacy and integration. During the relatively short period of the "Singing Revolution", the strong sense of historical restoration of justice was enough. Since then, developments have been more practically weighted. How does one solve the problem of ownership relations? How does one organize privatization in an effective and socially acceptable manner? How does one achieve an integrated nation state? Ruutsoo's article in this volume highlights two distinct problems. The nationalistic project runs counter to the resolution of the ethnic question; and at the same time to the achievement of universal citizenship. The binary sense of community still exists. And with the difficulties now encountered in the Estonian transition, any promises of material well-being can be swept aside. The field that Ruutsoo analyses includes several open questions. First of all, the legality of the legal state is essentially hierarchic. Within legality, the regulations (laws) and apparatuses (central and local administration, " b u reaucracy") are united. All the evidence we have indicates quite clearly that legislation in the country is deficient and unsystematic. The administrative apparatus remains far removed from Weber's ideas of bureaucracy as a meticulous piece of machinery. More generally, the situation is characterized by a weak state and a low level of social regulation. The point is emphatically underlined by the existence of organized crime on a large scale as well as widespread feelings of public insecurity.

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It is necessary to bear in mind that the lack of modernity is in many ways a heritage of the Soviet era. This applies to the nature of the production system at large and also to most parts of the work organization; and further, it also applies to everyday life and Lebensführung. This means that for the understanding of legitimation and integration in Estonian society, the Soviet period means more than just the abstract opposite pole of legality and justice; it also means continuity in structures and social practices. This is not to say that earlier power positions or resources are easy to carry on or convert (for more on this problem and for earlier results, see the article by Leiulfsrud and Sohlberg in this volume); rather the reference here is mainly to the limited opportunities to transform organizational and managerial practices, working habits or modes of reproduction and everyday life. If the economy of societies under transition is far removed from mature capitalist market economy, "merchant capitalism" (Burawoy, Krotov 1993) or something of that ilk, the story told by the case analysis of Soviet/Russian enterprises and their economic outer relations (Clarke 1993) says that this kind of situation also necessitates special power relations. Self-generated lateral links between enterprises increase. This gives more autonomy and power to (big) enterprises which are now free from the control and restrictions of the Party. The lack of "totalistic" state/party control also gives power to regional monopolies as "parastatal" centres of power. An important consequence is the deepening control by workers of production within the enterprises. A comparison of the Russian situation with the Baltic situation reveals clear differences in terms of power arrangements. First, there are noticeable d i f ferences of scale between Russian and Baltic companies. Second, normal capitalistic market relations and institutions are more developed in the Baltic states than they are in Russia. Third, for historical reasons, it is very likely that semi-autonomous economic monopolies will be built on the basis of old regional (political) power linkages in the Baltic states. A possible hypothesis for future development is that when the problems of "material legitimacy" increase in significance (and there are some signs that this might be happening now), the ethnic problem will withdraw more into the background and other social distinctions related to division of labour, class, gender and labour markets will assume greater importance from the point of view of social integration. For instance, a recent survey concludes that in the Baltic states "differences within ethnic communities are often greater than differences between ethnic communities" (Rose, Maley 1994: iv). Finally, we may observe that in addition to the problem of an underdeveloped civil society and political organization, political stability is also at a very low level in Estonia. This has acted to thwart efforts at effective legislation

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(for instance in the case of privatization) and also to strengthen social beliefs in continuity. The main reason behind the political instability and inefficiency in Estonia lies in the lack of unity within the political power bloc and recently also in its diminishing social support (for more on the rapidity of fluctuations in political support, see Lobjakas 1991). As far as theories of legitimacy and integration are concerned, there are some very important lessons to be learned from an examination of Estonian society, even though there is a serious scarcity of information. In the case of Estonia the transformation of power relations has differed very clearly from the pattern seen in other Eastern European studies. Importantly, the old political elite suffered more sweeping losses of its power positions than in any other case. The new political and partially economic elite is more technocratic than is given to understand by studies of Eastern Europe; here the "old network of power" was clearly underdeveloped in comparison with those of other earlier Soviet-type societies. Although the market mechanism is still not functioning "normally" in Estonian society, it is doing better than many others in terms of certain aspects of institutional economic regulation. For instance, there is now a relatively stable currency in place, even though there are some signs of mounting difficulties to keep it steady. There is also movement towards institutional social security, albeit at a very modest level, and the basic elements of normal employee relations are in evidence. Conspicuous in its absence, however, is the necessary institutional framework for a broader concept of institutional industrial relations, including the normal functioning of trade unions and the mechanisms of interest articulation and bargaining. In every case the politoideological projects in Baltic countries have been characterized by conflicting aims, instability and a short duration. Useful analyses have been presented of certain systemic elements of state socialism which provide integration and legitimation. The reproduction of the images of foe and charismatically mystified party interests and the faith in the unlimited constructibility of reality (intentional modernization turning into a technical project) are the most important of these (Stojanov 1992). If and where these elements are lacking, it is interesting to ask whether something similar will emerge to fill in these empty ideological spaces in Baltic societies. In the discussion above we have wanted to stress the fact that Estonia is a case apart. Compared with Russia, Estonia has gone through the process of transformation very quickly indeed, and it is not a very complex society. Many of the economic changes that the country has seen have also been more profound and happened more rapidly than in other Baltic countries (Kokk

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1993). Nonetheless there are many similarities with other "societies of transition". The list of similarities extends from social insecurity and incomplete market relations through weak and poorly organized state and political relations to the problems of everyday life and to the increasing importance of "material legitimacy" and the acceptance of authoritarian measures. More generally, there is the same ambivalence that we see in other cases: How does one build up a regulated and effective economy and society without losing the prospects of a working political democracy with a high level of citizenship competence?

4

Social Structure

During the socialist era the social structure of all Baltic societies was based on social divisions stemming from the Soviet mode of production. Officially, the three Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — were "non-antagonist two classes and one strata" societies (Rutkevich 1984). In other words, the vast majority of the economically active population were thought to belong to the working class or to kolkhoz workers, while the intelligentsia was a narrow service stratum. The Baltic states were the most developed part of the Soviet Union, and their industrial structure differed considerably from that of Armenia or Kirghizia, for instance. The labour force in the Baltics was highly educated, and the companies were engaged in the production of high technology (at least by Soviet standards). Agricultural production and the service sector (social infrastructure) were also more developed than in the rest of the USSR. Following the declaration of independence, the hegemonic project within the Baltic countries has been moving towards a full-scale adoption of the principles of market economy. This has required the pulling down of old structures and orders and the building of new ones instead of them. The key concepts here are those of entrepreneurship, privatization and professionalization. Entrepreneurship and privatization refer to the creation of capitalist social relations; the creation of the bourgeoisie, the middle class, and the working class. Professionalization, on the other hand, refers to the development of one fragment of the new middle class. Both processes are causing increased social mobility, both upward and downward. The Baltic states have applied a number of different tools in the project to privatize their national economies. Amongst the most important of these tools are the following (cf. Sutela 1993):

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1) Insider privatization, i.e. selling the company to its managers and workers. Vouchers have also been used. 2) Vouchers handed out to all people. 3) Restitution of landed property to old owners. 4) Selling companies to domestic or international buyers. 5) Creating stock markets; the first steps in this respect have been taken in Estonia. The privatization process was launched with very ambitious goals, the plan being to get it all sorted out with utmost efficiency. In practice, however, all the Baltic countries have been struggling to a lesser or greater extent with their privatization projects. They have now managed to privatize most of the service sector as well as small shops, cafes, etc., and many light industries are also under private control. Most ordinary people have used their privatization vouchers to buy flats for themselves. Most demands for restitution concern flats as well as landed property. All in all the privatization processes that have taken place so far have created four new social groupings within the Baltic states: land owners, flat owners, worker-shareholders, and manager-shareholders. A land owner is one who has bought or received land mainly for farming. A flat owner can be anyone who owned a flat or whose parents owned a flat or a house before the socialist era. Worker-shareholders, then, are those who own shares in the company they are working for. Ownership of shares does not imply any dramatic change in living conditions. Finally, manager-shareholders are those who are engaged in a company as manager-owners. Obtaining shares in the same way as workers, they have also purchased large numbers of shares for themselves during and after privatization. These are the real owners of the companies who are in control of the company's power resources and economic resources. Privatization is also connected to ethnic relations. Immigrants, or "aliens", have no possibilities to benefit from privatization. Restitution is only for the native population. In this respect ethnicity is one form of social closure. However, it seems that ethnicity is not playing as big a role as was expected. All the Baltic countries have similar difficulties with their major corporations. The industrial backbone of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania is still state-owned. Many of these companies, which in effect are huge conglomerates, are struggling with serious economic difficulties. There is not enough work at the moment to go around for the whole labour force, who may therefore be working on a part-time basis. People are getting only 80 % of their wages, or payment is more or less random. In principle the companies should have been declared bankrupt ages ago, but in the absence of relevant legislation they are still alive.

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Baltic privatization differs significantly from Russian privatization. Insider privatization or nomenclature privatization, as widely pursued in Russia, has not been very common in the Baltic countries, where governments have had greater control over the process of change than in Russia. The Baltic countries are trying to adopt the same strategies as Germany did with the East German companies. At the same time a whole legion of wheelers and dealers are making easy money. There are also more "honest" industrial companies that are turning out good results. Those that have subcontracts with mainly Finnish and Swedish companies are looking ahead at a bright future. The wage level in the Baltic countries is still so low that companies there will long be able to compete on the international markets with their prices. All of these activities are creating markets for different kinds of professional groups, like lawyers, accountants, consultants, etc. Professionalization has also got under way in certain public sector occupations. However, it is important to bear in mind that the bourgeoisie, as a social class and a social actor, remains very weak in contemporary Baltic countries. The situation is exactly the same for the petty bourgeoisie. Old traditions have disappeared, and it seems extremely difficult to encourage and create new entrepreneurship. New entrepreneurs are mainly working in trade and services, while new small industrial enterprises are rare. Class analysis has shown that the class situation of the working class in Latvia, for instance, is not at all homogenous, with massive differences in wage levels, social security, housing conditions and other social benefits. The living conditions of a male skilled worker employed in a computer factory are different from those of a female textile worker. Ethnic origin also plays an important role. Immigrants (or aliens, as they are often called by the local population) live in another world compared with original Estonians and Latvians. In Weberian terms, there was a social closure between original Baits and aliens. The power structures and privilege structures created and m a i n tained by the Communist Party carried very much weight at every level of Soviet society, including the Baltic countries. In her contribution to this volume Meilute Taljunaite distinguishes four main social groups in Lithuanian society: 1) company owners, amongst whom profit is the main source of income; 2) owner-managers, amongst whom profit is the main source of income; 3) managers and workers, for whom profit plays a major role in total incomes; and 4) those who live off their wages. New kinds of social divisions are emerging all the time. New processes that have to do with property, social capital and new types of occupational skills are playing a very important role in the social structures of contemporary Baltic countries. Any attempt to understand the social structures of contemporary post-socialist Baltic societies must take close account of these

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processes. Property and other economic considerations are gradually emerging as the most important aspects of people's social situation. However, the old ruling elite has in many cases managed to transform their old assets into new ones. Many members of the old nomenclature are now owners or co-owners of privatized corporations. But in the Baltic countries this transformation of power resources has not happened as widely as in Russia. The old political elite, on the other hand, has been losing its power positions. In the state apparatus old bureaucrats have been allowed to go, while young technocrats are now making all the key political decisions. In this respect, too, there are differences between the Baltic countries. New men are now in charge in Estonia, while in Lithuania the change has been more modest. Highly educated workers and specialists who can use their skills in the new situation will very probably survive, but the situation is much more difficult for those whose assets are more or less tightly bound up with Soviet-type production. The process of class formation has both an economic and a political aspect to it. So far civil society in the Baltic states has been virtually non-existent. The political parties do not represent any real social force, but rather groups of individuals and their ideas. The Soviet-type of trade union movement has completely disappeared, and free trade unions are now in the process of formation. However, during the past few months the situation has been changing in the Baltic countries, and it seems safe to predict that real social forces are now emerging. This is bound to have a major impact on class processes in the very near future. Men and women may also differ in their actions and aspirations. In traditional Soviet politics women had a formal representation in every political organ, but in the most important organs the share of women was only nominal. Traditionally, women have remained very much in the background, while men have taken on a more active and more visible role in Baltic societies as well. The growth of civil society in Eastern Europe has influenced the position of women in contradictionary ways. On the one hand feminists, for example, have been able to express their opinions openly. On the other hand, conservative " w o m e n - b a c k - t o - h o m e " programmes have been loudly advocated. One may also ask whether the same story that Barbara Ichorn (1993) has told about the position of women in Eastern Europe applies to Lithuania, for example. In short, structures, interests and actors form an interesting assembly of new possibilities and open questions for further sociological analysis. All over the former Soviet Union the concept of political generation has been important. Generations that have lived through Khrushchev's period had very different experiences from those who lived through Stalin's terror or Brezhnev's stagnation. It remains to be seen how such things, together with ethnicity, will affect the political organization in the Baltic countries.

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The question of the middle classes is particularly important in the context of post-socialist societies. In sociological terms there was no middle class in the former Soviet Union. In capitalist countries, the formation of the new middle class took almost a full century. Now, in the Baltic republics, it seems that the governments believe they can create a middle class within six months simply by launching a political programme. This kind of understanding of social processes is highly problematic; it should be clear that the formation of a real middle class will take much more time than expected (see also Pettai 1993). It is also important to remember that the social situations of different groups are more or less unstable. Today a businessman can make huge profits overnight, but he may also lose all he owns in the same space of time. The situation of the old intelligentsia is also problematic. While they still possess cultural capital, their material living conditions are very poor indeed. Almost every social group in the Baltics is faced with the same kind of uncertainty.

5

Research Strategies and Theories

It is easy to see in general terms that there is a gap between research knowledge and general theories in the case of "transitional societies". This is related, but we think only partially, to the gaps that remain in the understanding of certain basic important issues. One of these is the relationship between the methods applied and the type of knowledge we want to uncover (surveys, qualitative case studies, expert interviews, etc.). The other issue is the relationship between "levels" (from "macro" to "meso" and "micro"). The main factors, however, have to do with theory. The body of social theory is not of much help even though the analysis of transitional East and Central European societies also involves the dilemma of "structures and action" or "institutions and practices". The transitional process is different from that between non-capitalist social forms and capitalism as described by Marx, Weber or Sombart, and debated later by many others (Hilton 1978; Holton 1985; for the so-called Brenner debate, see Aston-Philpin 1985). This means that these analyses are not directly applicable in the new situation of transformations. But we do already know quite a lot; the only problems have to do with the nature of that which we know. We know about the difficulties of political implementation of planned transformations (Offe 1991), about the difficulties of maintaining the socio-political basis of reforms, etc. Clearly, we are facing a world of deep instability and insecurity. But is this all that has been included

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in such concepts as "change", "transition" or "transformation" if we do not accept any determinacy or teleology (see e.g. Gerne, Hedlund 1994) that is often packed into these concepts. There are numerous studies which tell us about the different routes that the transitional societies discussed here have adopted and about their systemic differences. However, given the newcomer status of the Baltic states, we cannot be sure what is going to happen next, nor what "example", if any, they have decided to follow. Nonetheless we believe that it is possible to submit some hypotheses regarding the changes and tendencies that have taken place so far as well as the societal problems that these ongoing changes are creating. At the same time we can observe some important differences between the Baltic states and Russia, for instance: Phase of high value-commitment, legitimation and high socio-political mobilization

Shortening latency of expectations

Regime of technocratic demands

Figure 1 : Features of Transition in Russia and in Estonia

If we address the more general question concerning the nature of the ongoing process of Baltic transformation, two things are evident. Everything has been changing very rapidly and very cyclically. Many unsolved problems remain in legislation, in institutionalization and in societal and moral regulation. It is important to recognize that the process is going ahead step by step. The preceding phase gave rise to the conflicts that are now leading to the next phase. So even if a more or less linear process is going on over a longer period of time, there also exist qualitatively different phases with their typical discrepancies. From one point of view the process of change may be described as follows: The peak of mobilization was at once the project of national independence; closely related was the project of building the nation-state. In the words of Ilja Srubar (1994:211), this was the high time of "value elites" during which the consolidating power of the "external foe" (the Soviet Union, Russia) was at its peak. This era also saw the aims of capitalist market economy and liberal democracy being adopted as the basis for the prospective future institutions. In the second phase social polarization and the material deficits and the problems of everyday security gave rise to serious discrepancy between the expectations of a better everyday life and reality. These inconsistencies may still lead to calls for a new kind of regime with new kinds of elites; as Srubar

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has it, to the rise of "functional elites". If pragmatic calls and the need to be willing to compromise have underdetermined the moral legitimation of value elites as transformational elites, the principles of performance and competence may step forward. This is similar to what we have seen in most parts of post-socialist societies (Srubar 1994). In the Baltic context this means that there is mounting pressure to change the types of elite and legitimation. Baltic societies are currently in the process of filling in the gaps of institutionalization and regulation that market capitalism requires of them. Increasingly, the focal point of conflict will shift towards in the field of economic and social problems. If the basis for solving those problems is still limited, even if actual poverty is not at the same level as in Russia, for instance (cf. Ahlberg 1994), political instability will still be the rule. In this case the future alternatives presented for central Europe (Srubar 1994: 213) may also be applicable to the Baltic states. One option is to revert to populism, to locate the external foe and establish a sense of solidarity against the foe. This can be done "by rejecting compromise politics and developing simple, binary schemes of judgement in accordance with the existing moral response pattern of respect or disdain" (Srubar 1994:213). Srubar says that this type of solution is in evidence in the populist tendencies apparent now in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Another option is to go for the authoritarian line combined with an efficient technocratic project with successful functional elites. It is clear that these scenarios of hegemonic projects can be combined to varying degrees in the Baltic countries. This also determines the nature of future social contradictions. Reverting briefly to the knowledge and theory requirements of an effort to understand Baltic transformations, there is clearly a serious deficit at least in terms of existing research knowledge on the intellectual, social and moral capacities and trajectories of different elites, on intellectuals and professionals and on the willingness of ordinary people to accept the social costs of politically led structural reforms. The general frame of the research strategy is also still to take shape. The challenge still remains to link together qualitatively rather different parts of knowledge and to make sure that they produce (1) an additive understanding of transformational change, and that (2) the basic nature of this understanding is multi-level and systemic. Before we can present a meaningful synthesis of the current social structure in the Baltic republics, it is necessary to do a lot more research on the subject. The social reality of the Baltic countries today is far more complex than that of the Nordic countries, for instance. There are several transformation processes going on at the same time, the countries are trying to cope with both an economic and social crisis, and their relationships with Russia are all but stable. In order to draw a useful picture of the social structure of the Baltic

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countries, we will need to analyse the structuration of the class situations at the economic, social and cultural level. The Baltic countries are heading towards market economy, but it's a long and hard road. They are still to complete the building of the nation-state and the legal state. Interest organization and interest representation are in a more or less constant state of flux. Labour markets and labour market relations are virtually non-existent. In short: the situation is very fluid, and the challenges presented to the sociologist are endless. All that has been said above has important implications with regard to the choice of our research strategies. The standard tools and concepts of sociological analysis are not directly applicable to the Baltic case; the concepts of social class, class consciousness etc. are simply of no use in describing social divisions in Estonia or Latvia. We can of course present exact figures based on this or that class theory, but there is another reality between the figures. To reach a deeper understanding of the present situation, a wider variety of analytical tools and concepts will be needed, including, importantly, the notions of power resources and assets. This is not to deny the importance of class analysis; the argument is merely that we have to take into account the special circumstances of the Baltic countries. To return to the original question we had at the beginning of this article, that may now be re-formulated: Is it necessary for the Baltic countries to go through all the stages of development that all other capitalist countries have gone through? The answer to this question (as is often the case) has two sides to it: yes and no. Yes in the sense that there are certain structural preconditions that must be met before a development towards "normal capitalism" is conceivable. These preconditions were shortly listed at the beginning of our article: a functioning economy based on a strong industrial sector with high productivity (no nation can survive on the strength of services alone), a rational legal system, and a legitimate social order which guarantees satisfactory interest articulation and representation for all people. And no in the sense that the fate of the Baltic republics would be one of the newly colonized countries of the European third world or any currently known variant of capitalism. Here we could quote Michael Burawoy, who writes that "Just as in the past state policy was based on a single road to socialism, so now state policy veers toward a single road to capitalism. The illusion that somehow Hungary (or Baltic states) can escape the vice of international capitalism is the mirror image of the vehement denunciation of communism. Since c o m munism was all evil, capitalism must be all beneficent" (Burawoy, Lukacs 1992: 171). The point in Burawoy's argument is that there are alternatives, be it worker ownership or self-management or whatever, but the destination is not predetermined. And the decision as to which path will be chosen and by which means applied, that rests with the people.

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A proper sociological understanding of the contemporary Baltic countries requires a serious research effort that combines a wide range of different databases, both quantitative and qualitative. It also requires a careful reevaluation of our standard understanding as well as an open mind to new interpretations. This means that we have to combine empirical analysis with the theories of social change and other theoretical tools.

References Anderson, B., Imagined communities: Reflections of the origin and spread of nationalism, London, New Left Books 1983. Aston, T., Philpin, C. (eds.), The Brenner debate. Agrarian class structure and economic development in pre-industrial Europe, Cambridge University Press 1985. Beetham, D., The legitimation ofpower, Basingstoke, Macmillan 1991. Berger, J., After the Victory of the West: Theories of Modernization Revised, Paper presented to the Conference of the American Sociological Association, August 20-24,1992, Pittsburg. Blom, R., Integration of a different kind, in: Alanen, I. (ed.), Baltic states at a crossroads. Publications of the Department of Sociology, University of Jyväskylä 56,1993: 26-34. Bnican, S., Democracy at Odds with Market in Post-Communist Societies, in: Keren, M., Ofer, G. (eds.), Economic Reform in the Former Communist Bloc, Boulder, Westview Press 1992. Burawoy, M., Lukacs J., The Radiant Past —Ideology and Reality in Hungary's Road to Capitalism, Chicago, University of Chicago Press 1992. Gemer, Κ., Hedlund, S., Homo oeconomicus meets homo sovieticus, The Finnish Review of East European Studies 1,1994: 8-26 Hall, S .,A Hard Road to Renewal — Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left, Verso, London 1988. Hilton, R., The transition from feudalism to capitalism, New Left Books, London 1978. Ichorn, B., Cinderella goes to market, London, Verso 1993. Jessop, B., Regulation theories in retrospect and prospect, in: Economy and Society, vol. 19, no. 2, 1990. Keren, M., Ofer, G. (eds.), Economic Reform in the Former Communist Bloc, Boulder, Westview Press 1992. Kokk, Α., Economic policy in Baltics: the same steps with different speed, Baltic Review 3,1993: 46-48. Lobjakas, Α., Emerging multiparty system and public opinion in Estonia 1989-1991, EMOR-reports 1,1991. Lockwood, D., Social integration and system integration, in: Zollschan and Hirsch (eds.), Explorations of social change, Routledge, London 1964. Mouzelis, M., Back to sociological theory. Constitution of social orders, London, Macmillan 1991. Muller, Κ., Modernizing Eastern Europe: Theoretical Problems and Political Dilemmas, Archives Européennes de Sociologie, vol. XXXIII, No. 1/1992. Offe, C., Capitalism by democratic design? Democratic Theory Facing the Triple Transition in East Central Europe, Social Research 58, no. 4,1991. Pettai, I., Middle Class' consumption features in Estonia, in: Estonian Institute of Future Studies: Formation of the Middle Class in Transitory Societies, Tallinn 1993. Rose, R., Maley, W., Nationalities in the Baltic States, Studies in Public Policy 222, Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow 1994. Rutkevich, M., Towards Social Homogeneity, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1984.

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Srubar, I., War der reale Sozialismus modern? Versuch einer strukturellen Bestimmung. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, vol. 43, no. 3,1991. Srubar, lija, Variants of the Transformation Process in Central Europe. A Comparative Assessment. Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 23 (3), 1994. Stojanov, G , The post-socialist transformation: A unique (re)modemization, in: Kriesberg & Segal (eds.), The transformation of European communist societies, Research in social movements, conflict and change, vol. 14, London, Jai Press 1992. Szelenyi, I., Szelenyi, H., Why socialism failed: towards a theory of system breakdown — Causes of disintegration of East European state socialism. Theory and Society, vol. 23, no. 2,1994. Stzompka, P., Civilizational Incompetence: The Trap of Post-Communist Societies, Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 22 (2), 1993. Sutela, P. (ed.), The Russian Economy in Crisis and Transition, Bank of Finland, A:86, Helsinki 1993. Weber, M., Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Hamburg 1970.

Contextualizing Social Stratification in Comparative Research Hâkon Leiulfsrud, Peter Sohlberg

1

Introduction

The concept of power is one of the most controversial items in the modern social science discourse. Scholars disagree not so much about the relevance of the concept, but about its definition and implications. The reason why power is so important lies in its all-pervasiveness: not only does it permeate all social relations and all social processes, but it also determines relative power positions within these relations.1 Power as a disposition or latent quality is a central concern in any attempt to understand long-term patterns of structural change and development. The study of the latent contents of power is usually grounded in theoretical models that often have an indirect, deductive connection with the manifest contents of power. In times of profound and sweeping change, however, power is manifested in a much more visible way than in situations of apparent stability. Our main concern in this paper is with the relationship between power resources and stratification mechanisms. We are particularly interested in how an analysis of this relationship can help us understand the relations between structural constraints and the active use of power resources within different national settings. Examples of relevant stratification dimensions are provided by class, sex/gender and ethnicity, both individually and collectively. Comparative research has traditionally used these dimensions as more or less static background variables, largely ignoring their role in various subcontexts. There is also widespread disagreement among scholars on how these categories should be operationalized, and accordingly on what sort of manifestations and effects they have. 2 The line of inquiry which uses analytical stratification schemes without specifying any proper classification mechanisms, is inclined to regard stratification categories as mere static patterns. By contrast, the strategy that sets out to identify the factors that have led to stratification in the first place regards

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the process at once as the cause and effect. This perspective makes it more plausible to look at stratification as a cause in so far as the underlying social mechanisms have been identified. The stratification dimensions of class, gender and ethnicity are often approached in terms of individual characteristics, but they are also commonly aggregated at the macro (national) level in the form of frequency distributions. A conventional strategy in empirically-oriented class and stratification research is to approach the class structure within a given country in terms of frequency patterns, without paying serious attention to the question of how this "structure" is linked up with power resources. However, during the 1980s and early 1990s we have seen definite signs of a reorientation both within the more established, empirical school of (Weberian) stratification research (Goldthorpe et al. 1987; Marshall et al. 1988; Erikson, Goldthorpe 1992a) and within the Marxist approach (Wright 1985; 1989a; Przeworski 1985; Suàrez 1989). The level of methodological awareness as well as the statistical sophistication is at a completely different plane today than was the case in the comparative class and stratification research of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. It must be added, however, that this type of interpolation at the aggregate level between different points of time is often profoundly static by nature. At the same time, macro-level analysis is rarely very sensitive to transformation processes taking place at lower institutional levels. One way to achieve greater sensitivity here is to look at the different arenas on which power is created and utilized, such as the household level, in companies, trade unions, political parties. In comparisons of the kind we are currently doing between the Nordic and Baltic countries, a particular concern is with the actual contents of stratification processes and dimensions. The difficulties of comparison are rarely (if ever) a serious concern in conventional class and stratification models; in the best case the strategy of analysis will place accent on identical variables and coding directives. It is very rarely that serious attention will be given to the concrete question of how contents can be captured and described in their relevant contexts, to the fact that given variables can have different meanings and contents in different cases. 3 A symptomatic feature of the work that has been done within comparative mobility research is precisely the absence of a critical analysis of mediating instances that would help to explain national similarities and differences in social stratification. 4 Analysis of what lies behind and what might explain any convergencies or divergencies in mobility structures is not a priority concern in these works. The same applies to the question of how far social inequalities are filtered by similar institutional conditions. 5

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In order to produce a description of both the active and passive aspect of the stratification mechanism, it is necessary to take into consideration what could be termed a "double structuralism". One part of this structuralism is a mode of analysis concerned with the mapping of the patterns and forms of power resources and their importance for stratification. The purpose with this mode of analysis is to identify more or less fixed reference points in a world of change and to find a general scheme usable in comparative research. This is a form of analysis using the strength of the tradition of French structuralism, where the focus is on processes of transformation and not of discontinuity. This kind of "pattern structuralism" would be too esoteric, however, if not complemented with a substantial structural perspective, identifying basic social and economic structures on an empirical level. Describing the logic of power resources and the transformation of power resources does not mean that we as social scientists can ignore their empirical content. In order to grasp this "double structuralism", we have chosen to elaborate on models and concepts formulated by the American sociologist Erik Olin Wright and the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. In recent years there has been an increasing tendency among class and stratification researchers to take departure from production-related r e sources, capital or assets (Parkin 1979; Wright 1985, 1989b and to a certain extent Marshall et al. 1988); educational capital (Bourdieu 1988); or as Pierre Bourdieu (1984; 1990b), from different forms of symbolic capital. However, there have been only few systematic applications of the concept of resources in different spheres and at different levels of society. It is still quite rare for comparative analyses to systematically study different aspects of power resources against the contexts that legitimize or create these power resources. It is important to regard this not only as a form of automatic or passive structural qualities but also to look at how power resources are actively utilized and transformed both by individuals and by collectives and social movements. In short then, our intention is to outline a perspective on stratification where power resources (in the sense of assets actively utilized) are the smallest common denominator. We start out from the assumption that these resources underlie, in a very fundamental sense, the development of social strata as well as various stratification dimensions. We start with a discussion of the question of contextual dependence, which is addressed by looking at how society is divided into different sectors and at how these can be related to the concept of "social fields". We also attempt to relate different social fields to one another in so far as we demonstrate that Bourdieu's analysis of economic capital is problematic, which is particularly evident in situations of abrupt transformation.

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We then move on to look at how economic, cultural, political and social power resources are manifested in the economic sphere and at the repercussions on social stratification.

2

Sectors versus Fields

A distinctive trend in social development today is a movement towards globalization, with various economic, political and social phenomena easily cutting across national borders. In the social sciences one response has been to develop global perspectives for analysing the situation of global system dependence (see e.g. Wallerstein 1979; 1985). 6 At the same time as it is necessary in the current situation to look at universal phenomena in a global context, it is important to recognize that nation-states are often too broad as units of analysis for substantial social-scientific research. What we wish to find are theoretically meaningful subsystems or subunits of analysis within the national context. While it is true that background variables may be regarded as such subcontexts, these are hardly very interesting contexts in theoretical terms (excepting the stratification dimensions of class and gender). However, the starting-point here is to discuss the subcontext within which these stratification dimensions can be used. The sectorizations used at the nation-state level are often of ad hoc nature rather than grounded in any general theory; they are typically set within an ideographic perspective and grounded in specific national and historical conditions, which obviously undermines their applicability for comparative purposes. At least the following general principles can be outlined for the type of contexts we have in mind. There is necessarily some overlap in the division proposed in that the application of different criteria may result in the same delineation of context: - A spatial or geographical division where different regions constitute separate contexts of analysis. An example is provided by a comparison of coastal regions with land-locked areas, or a comparison of centre with periphery. In order to be meaningful, this kind of spatial division must coincide with other characteristics, e.g. with population structures, industrial structures, industrial traditions, etc. within the different regions. It is useless to compare geographical regions unless these differences are taken into account. - A functional division where the distinctions have to do with the different functions and positions of different activities within society. For instance,

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Silicon Valley in the US could be seen as a hi-tech region that serves as an engine for post-industrial development in society. Another example of a functional division is to look upon certain parts of society as belonging to the infrastructure and others as part of reproduction. Distinctions of society into productive and non-productive sectors are also usually based on functional criteria, which have been widely applied in the field of sociology for purposes of dividing society into sectors. 7 The aim is usually to study different types of activities and functions in different subsystems of society as a whole. The AGIL scheme proposed by Talcott Parsons is a classical example (cf. Parsons, Bales, Shils 1953). Another, more modern example of sectorization in chiefly functional terms is the distinction suggested by Anthony Giddens of the institutional dimensions of modernity. Giddens refers to four institutional dimensions in modern society: Capitalism, Surveillance, Industrialism and Military Power. This is hardly an exhaustive account of the sectors of modern industrial society, even though the distinction Giddens makes between capitalism and industrialism is useful. This distinction is applicable, for example, in the industrialized parts of the Baltic countries. The problem with functional sectorizations of society is that their empirical anchorage is often rather diffuse. The fact that ideal-type activities may be far removed from intentional activities at an empirical level, is illustrated by the G-cell in Parsons' AGIL scheme where there should occur unanimous goal-directed activity — if one elected to step down from the system level to a more concrete reality. The degree of abstraction in functional descriptions tends to rise to such a level that they lose their discriminatory power in concrete reality. Consequently functional definitions allow for considerable flexibility. - An organizational/institutional division where the focus is on formal institutions, companies, associations and organizations. For instance, membership of the trade union can be seen as representing such a subcontext, or employment in the state and communal sector versus employment in the private sector. The main advantage of this criterion is that it allows for (at least nominally) exact distinctions between different companies, associations, organizations and institutions. It is easier on this basis to operationalize these sectors in a meaningful way than is the case with a functional sectorization. The main problem, on the other hand, is that the sectorization may be too static and that it therefore may fail to uncover informal relations and informally regulated power resources. The problem with the sectorizations we have been discussing above is that they are general and deductive (e.g. Parsons), and remain detached from

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complexities, c h a n t s , historically specific situations and contradictions at the empirical level. An important exception to the rule is represented by feminist contributions. However, national differences and paths of development in women's wage employment (which has traditionally been at a much higher level in the east than in the west) implies serious problems with regard to the mechanical application of established distinctions between male and female spheres, including the relationship between the public and private (for a useful analysis of the latter, see Siltanen, Stanworth 1984). Usually, stratification in this context is described in dichotomous terms: male-female, production-reproduction, dual labour markets, biology-culture, instrumental rationality vs. caring rationality, etc. 10 The most important point in view of the present concern is that the sectors identified are rarely differentiated on the basis of resources or power. Another problem with this type of general sectorization is that they are not very sensitive to the empirical contents of activities, conflicts or changes. Individual and collective activities within these sectorized models often have no other function than to help constitute the ideal-type models. 11 Instead of applying a traditional concept of context which simply sets out the formal conditions for different activities, it would be a more useful strategy to operate with "social fields" that are created through the utilization by individuals and collectives of resources as well as through conflicts over those resources. In this connection it is important that these fields are specified in such a way that they are sensitive to internal stratification based on flexible power resources. In other words, the key thing is to take into account the internal differentiation in different contexts of classes and social groups. This means that the question of power must be included in the stratification discourse, and not only in terms of different indices of positions and power as a way of defining stratification categories. This sort of classification serves merely as the starting point for a truly meaningful analysis of stratification.

3

Bourdieu: Fields, Capital and Habitus

One of the most systematic analyses of society into different areas or social fields has been presented by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. The concept of "field" does not work in isolation from other notions in Bourdieu's analysis; it is meaningful only in so far as it is linked up with the concepts of habitus and capital. Our intention here is neither to present an exhaustive description of Bourdieu's theoretical perspective nor to explore his empirical accounts of

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the social conditions in France. Instead, the focus of our discussion is on some of Bourdieu's key concepts and on how these can be applied to the analysis of empirical materials. What we want to uncover are such elements that can be usefully applied to the comparative analysis of social change and stratification. At the same time, we intend to discuss some of the problems that may follow with an uncritical application of a model that is grounded in Bourdieu ' s theories. First, however, we shall briefly examine the key concepts themselves, and then move on to a critical consideration of their application.

3.1

Social Fields

The concept of "social field" refers to a more or less restricted area or arena within which people or institutions are struggling for control over shared resources. 12 The boundaries of a particular field have to do with the benefits or profits that are divided within the field, such as honours, recognition or positions. 13 There are distinct structuralist elements in Bourdieu's argumentation on the basis of which he regards fields as a matter of positions and relationships between these positions rather than as an issue that boils down to the concrete individuals who occupy and carry these positions. Bourdieu uses the concept of field in order to distinguish between different subsystems in society where a struggle is going on for limited assets or resources. The rules that govern the struggle may themselves be subject to contention. Bourdieu has no explicit typology on existing social fields in society; society can simply be regarded as consisting of a number of different and partly overlapping social fields. Individuals may take part and belong to many different fields at the same time. Bourdieu has carried out numerous empirical studies of a wide range of different areas in society (particularly in France), using the concept of social field to distinguish between the arenas on which business managers, academic workers and cultural employees wage a battle for assets and positions. 14 As was pointed out earlier, sectorizations that are not based on a formal institutional construct tend to be more or less of an ad hoc nature. Bourdieu's social fields are somewhat more fluid than most existing sectorizations, but at the same time he has also been more systematic in constructing them. The fluidity of his social fields derives from the fact that they are defined in fairly general terms, from the vantage-point of specific arenas with a specific type of agents or institutions fighting over scarce resources. Both the agents and the resources may vary. At the same time the field is systematically construed in that it includes the relations between different social positions and even some sort of value hierarchy, and ultimately also a struggle for resources. Each social field involves a stratification dimension.

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Social fields unfold and develop with changes in power relations and the exchange of capital. Also, new social fields may grow up while others disappear. There may also emerge new power relations (in terms of values and capital), causing formerly dominant groups to withdraw into the background and others to gain in strength. An example of how social fields may change is provided by a situation where, say, teachers in a Baltic university are replaced by politically less burdened researchers from the Academy. The important thing from our point of view is that the concept of field allows for such a formulation of contextuality that can help to link together the empirical with the theoretical level. Social fields, in the sense that they are defined and understood by Pierre Bourdieu, also make possible a more differentiated and detailed analysis of different power resources. Bourdieu has a special concept of capital for different types of power resources.

3.2

Capital

At first glance Bourdieu's definition of capital does not seem very original; it refers in very general terms to assets and resources. However, Bourdieu is quite original in his systematic treatment of other assets (capital) than economic resources. He argues strongly against economic determinism in suggesting that other than economic resources may be of crucial importance to understanding patterns of stratification in society. Bourdieu's expansion of the concept of capital implies an emphasis on the key role and meaning of social values to accepting a given phenomenon as a form of capital. This is how his concept of symbolic capital is construed; it refers to whatever is given value in a systematic context. The phenomenon that is (more or less systematically) recognized by a social group as possessing inherent value may be regarded as a form of symbolic capital, as a resource for whoever possesses it (see e.g. the chapter on symbolic capital in The Logic of Practice). In his concrete analyses Bourdieu often operates with the umbrella concept of cultural capital, which refers to all such phenomena that have inherent value in the cultural sphere: a classical education, sophisticated patterns of consumption, the ability to relate to an ongoing discourse, language use, etc. Bourdieu attaches special importance to the way in which cultural capital may assume a reproductive function within the educational system. Another form of capital that Bourdieu discusses and that is particularly important for the present purposes is social capital. Social capital refers to the resources that flow from the individual's network in a broad sense of the term: to kin relations, contacts with old university friends, freemasons, etc. In the

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Baltic countries this type of informal contact may be of central importance in gaining access to consumption goods, for example. We have here given some examples of assets and resources that are not primarily economic but that nonetheless may be very important to individuals or groups of individuals. The same applies here to capital resources that was said above about social fields: the important point is not to identify what kind of capital assets exist but rather to utilize the concept of capital as a tool for analysing the structure of social reality. There is also a measure of mobility between different capital assets that Bourdieu analyses in terms of capital conversion, implying that an individual or group of individuals exchange a certain capital asset for some other asset. A typical example is provided by the conversion of economic capital 15 into educational capital, with money invested in sending children to a school with a good reputation. Two important dimensions of the capital assets of individuals and groups are their volume and structure. Volume refers quite simply to the amount of resources and structure to the relative division of different forms of capital, particularly the breakdown of cultural versus economic capital. 16

3.3

Habitus

Bourdieu's concept of habitus is intended above all to bridge the gap between micro and macro, between individual and structure. Habitus represents a way of relating the power of structure and the individual's activity to one another. The concept also aims to shed light on the continuity of social structures over time, an issue that Bourdieu tackles in terms of homologies, i.e. structural similarities (see e.g. Bourdieu 1984: 175ff). Bourdieu uses the concept of habitus in various different connections and with different emphases. One definition that covers most aspects of habitus and that can therefore serve as a starting point for our discussion is as follows: The conditionings associated with a particular class of conditions of existence produce habitus, systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them. Objectively "regulated" and "regular" without being in any way the product of obedience to rules, they can be collectively orchestrated without being the product of the organizing action of a conductor (Bourdieu 1990b: 53).

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One of the key themes that cuts across the notion of habitus is thus order in the social world. Habitus has its roots in the social structure. It is this passive side (as far as the individual is concerned) that deals with "structured structures". The social structure is structured, and herein lies the habitus of individuals or the class habitus of classes. This implies that even "individual taste" in representative arts or fashion is socially construed and determined. However, Bourdieu does not content himself with this traditional structural moment, but in a true structuralist spirit his habitus is also transposed into different social fields.18 The dominant elite, which acquires its power resources and legitimacy from the social structure, utilizes these resources in its everyday life. The actual forms of utilization will vary depending on the specific historical circumstances. For instance, the techniques of domination that were used in the academic world some 50 years ago are not necessarily applicable in the academic world today. The change of a successful strategy can be regarded as a transposition of strategy. Strategies can be transposed not only over time but also across different social fields. The concrete contents of an elite group's strategy may have changed, yet it may be just as successful as before. As we can see from the above, these strategies are not (according to Bourdieu) necessarily conscious. As a general rule, Bourdieu uses his concept of habitus as a concrete tool of analysis at the individual or group level to examine the actions, attitudes, opinions and strategies of individuals or groups within different social fields. His specific concern may be with the attitudes of a cultural elite towards art and theatre, or with the use of photography in different social groups (see e.g. Distinction, part three). A typical discussion of habitus will look at how pupils with different degrees of cultural capital cope within the educational system. As we saw earlier in connection with our discussion of social fields, Bourdieu applies a conflict perspective in the sense that he says a struggle is going on for scarce resources in the social fields.

4

"Bourdieu's Model"

The three concepts of Bourdieu's that we have briefly described in the foregoing are intended to be used as an integrated whole. In his book Distinction, Bourdieu (1984:101) formulates the relationship between these concepts as follows: [(Habitus χ Capital)] + Field = Practice.

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This formula needs to be interpreted with utmost care and at the same time with good intentions because it is very much a quasi-exact one. It would hardly make very much sense to give numeric values to the concepts in the formula, even to capital; nor does it really make sense to add habitus and capital with fields. It is also highly problematic to multiply capital with habitus in that they are directly related to each other. Nonetheless the formula can serve as more than just a strawman in that it provides important information about the structure of the three concepts. Habitus and capital should be seen as resources of individuals or collectives. To translate resources simply as capital is not adequate because resources must be put to practical use; and to translate resources simply as habitus is also not adequate because this means one misses the continuity and connection with the social structure that is involved in capital assets. The formula also informs us that neither habitus nor capital assets can be understood in an absolute meaning but must be analysed within the context of different social fields. In sum then, we may conclude that social fields constitute contexts; that capital describes the resources possessed by individual and groups of individuals within these contexts; and that habitus is a systematic way of classifying social activities and to describe their place in relation to the social structure.

It is paradoxical that whereas Bourdieu displays a genuine empirical orientation, his work is usually discussed in the context of theoretical discourses. The paradox resides in the fact that what we have termed Bourdieu's "model" does not in fact constitute an independent theory but is rather a way of organizing and dealing with social reality. Our criticisms in this section against Bourdieu are not motivated by general theoretical considerations; instead our main focus is on what we consider to be shortcomings in his model in so far as it is applicable to comparative analysis of countries with very different social structures. Bourdieu's analyses often exhibit a distinct ethnological orientation, and he is very much inclined to focus on the mediating level between the individual and structure. This habitus orientation obviously gives his work an individual touch, and it is easy to see class habitus more as an aggregate of an ideal type of individual habitus and less as collective, coordinated strategies. 19 The individualistic inclination that flows from Bourdieu's empirical focus on the individual habitus could be compensated by comprehensive descriptions of the social structure (or, in Bourdieu's words, of "social space"). 20 Unfortunately, however, he fails to provide a more systematic account of structural development in the traditional social-scientific sense.

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One way to describe this shortcoming (using Bourdieu's own terminology) is to say that he has no systematic account of the development of social fields or relationships between different social fields, nor any deepgoing discussions of the relationships between different forms of capital.

5

Bourdieu from a Structural Point of View

Bourdieu normally operates with more or less stable contexts where any changes that happen take place within distinct fields and where the social space is quite unproblematic. Social space constitutes a fixed and more or less uncharted background. Changes in the social field find expression primarily through the struggles taking place in that field. In view of the thoroughgoing structural changes that are taking place in the Baltic countries, it does not seem particularly fruitful to look upon these simply in terms of changes within fields. These changes must also be approached at the structural level, in economic, political, social and legal terms. Structural changes always have implications for the form and content of the field, for the rules that apply and for existing hierarchies. It is only after the fields have changed at this general level that new strategies take shape within the fields; and it is from this stage that Bourdieu normally starts with his analysis. It is of course possible to translate this macro-level process where social fields change and emerge and cease to exist en masse in terms of social fields. For instance, the elite groups that have influenced legislation in the Baltic countries since independence are very probably in control of the political field at the macro level. However, it is more fruitful to approach this as a form of utilizing power resources at a more general plane than to approach them simply as mediated within a number of social fields. Our earlier critique of the reification of the dimensions applied in traditional variable approaches also applies to Bourdieu's treatment of social fields. Even though it is stressed that these fields are inherently dynamic, it is hard to avoid the impression that they are in fact highly static in both spatial and temporal terms. Bourdieu makes an important distinction here between "social fields" and "social space", the latter appearing as a relatively conventional stratification model (cf. Bourdieu 1984: 128-129). It is hardly a coincidence that Bourdieu so often operates with ideal types expressed in the form of habitus and that he has difficulties with ambivalences and contradictory positions (e.g. inter-marriages). At the same time as Bourdieu's analysis often implies a reification of social fields, these fields have an independent existence beyond their constitution

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in individual cases. For instance, the cultural field is regarded as an independent social structure even though its concrete content has varied considerably. Even hierarchies within the cultural field have changed over time. If social fields change in general, this implies a change in stratification patterns as well, i.e. the selection mechanisms have also changed as a consequence. Changes of social fields are directly related to changes of forms of capital. As far as social capital and symbolic capital are concerned, we expect these to lose significance in comparison with economic capital in that the process of change is bound to become slower and new power relations are likely to become institutionalized. One hypothesis could be that symbolic capital does not have very much value if (at least potentially) it can be exchanged for economic capital, i.e., jobs or goods. If capital conversion strategies would be allowed to work freely at the collective level without external disturbances, this would mean that the total volume of capital possessed by different groups would remain more or less constant. However, from this static perspective it is difficult to perceive social mobility as a systematic phenomenon within the social system. From Bourdieu's point of view, social mobility is generally treated as an individual phenomenon and distinguished from the phenomenon of habitus, where individuals successfully convert their capital assets or (in exceptional cases) fail to do so and fall in the social space. Upward social mobility implies that individuals or groups of individuals succeed in upgrading and increasing their capital assets, e.g. by appearing as innovators in the cultural field. This often implies that elite groups in their cultural consumption and in their attitudes take distance from other groups (cf. Bourdieu 1984:132ff). Apart from status quo strategies which (if successful) imply a low level of mobility, there is also another form of activity within social fields that is directed at groups with less capital assets. We are referring here to distanciation, a phenomenon that Bourdieu has analysed chiefly in the cultural field, and most particularly within the field of taste (see e.g. Bourdieu 1984, esp. part three). However, we believe that this is a strategy that has implications not only with regard to symbolic but also other capital resources. Privileged groups exercise their power resources in the social and economic fields as well. Reference should be made here to a sociological debate that ever since Max Weber has drawn attention to strategies of distanciation (see e.g. Parkin 1979). We consider it a major shortcoming in Bourdieu's work that these distanciation strategies are mainly set in the cultural field. In Bourdieu's analyses, the direction of distanciation is very rarely from those who have limited capital resources towards those with abundant resources. The direction is from top to below. However, the evidence from ethnomethodological research on subcultures speaks against this, suggesting that distanciation is aimed at groups outside one's own, including groups that

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in general terms are more privileged (see e.g. Becker 1963; Cohen 1972; Hall, Jefferson 1976). From a sociological point of view, there is no reason why distanciation should not take place from below, as a move in an active strategy of resistance. Workers build up informal collectives to protect themselves against management (see e.g. Lysgaard 1961); women join forces in networks so as to safeguard their positions as leaders and entrepreneurs and in this way to distance themselves collectively from men; ethnic minorities seek to maintain their distinctive cultural characteristics as a strategy of defence against dominant culture (Hecter 1987). This type of distanciation strategy which serves to strengthen and maintain the group's external boundaries, does not mean that the group is a homogenous one. In fact it usually implies distinct dimensions of stratification. In terms of power and the traditional background variables discussed above, the question of inclusion and exclusion within social fields and within the highest layers of social fields, is very important. Gender discrimination does not have to be intentional, but it may be the outcome of an organizational culture with gender-specific leanings. For women technicians, for instance, the strength of the intention of a patriarchal educational structure or feminized socialization does not fully explain the distorted gender composition. The importance of having the right education, of ethnic (and gender) membership for attaining a certain position in the social field and in the social space is a further example of non-intentional power mechanisms. This aspect can be operationalized to apply to the formal and informal rules that apply in the field. Power and power strategies must be examined in a broader context than just within social fields. One way to formulate power and resources from a micro and macro perspective is to see strategies of utilizing capital assets within a social field as micro power. In addition, the volume of capital implies possession of power. By contrast the power to control the development of the field's structure in a general sense amounts to macropower. Another dimension of power has to do with the opportunity to coordinate one's power resources together with other agents. This is particularly important in the Baltic context where the institutionalization of the social field is still in its infancy.

5.1

Power Resources on the Economic Field

Bourdieu's research programme can be seen both as a complement to Marxist class analysis within the domain of culture and as a determined move away from class reductionism. For Bourdieu, production becomes the "black box" which creates the volume of economic capital possessed by different indi-

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viduals and groups. As a consequence of his exclusive focus on symbolic capital, Bourdieu has considerable difficulty in studying the processes of transformation between the economic and symbolic field at a structural level. One possible reaction to Bourdieu's heavy emphasis on symbolic capital at the expense of economic capital 21 is to throw overboard his analytical model. However, rather than a wholesale rejection we believe it makes more sense to elaborate and differentiate the analysis of economic resources by applying a strategy of analysis that is comparable to that applied in the analysis of symbolic capital. In connection with rapid changes and in situations of structural dysfunction, economic capital becomes even more problematic and intertwined with other capital resources, such as social capital and knowledge capital. In other words, we need to turn to someone other than Bourdieu in search of the tools we need for the analysis of economic resources. One of the contemporary scholars who is known most particularly for his theoretical contributions and for his analyses of economic capital, is the sociologist Erik Olin Wright. Especially in his more recent work (1985; 1989a-b) Wright focuses on the struggle for different forms of economic resources in a broad sense of the term. By exploring the access to versus absence of economically relevant capital resources of individuals within a game-theory setting, Wright says it is possible meaningfully to study different forms of exploitation. On the basis of what he regards as material interests, Wright sets out by construing different classes (capitalists, small employers, wage earners and intermediate groups). This model serves as the basis for his analysis of empirical class relations. Wright was quite heavily criticized (with good reason) during the 1980s for what was denounced as an overly static framework for analysis. Class structure, for Wright, was a formalized system that he construed on the basis of his "Marxist" interpretation of material interests. Game theory does not make easier but rather complicates our effort to understand the process of class formation in concrete empirical contexts (see e.g. Burawoy 1989; Rose, Marshall 1989; Carchedi 1989). However, surprisingly little substantial criticism has been directed against Wright's operational criteria of strategic class resources. 22 The problems with universal operationalizations are clearly highlighted by the following example. The position of worker, manager, or professional employee with a high level of autonomy does not necessarily have the same consequences in Finland as in Estonia or the other Baltic states. The position of a medical doctor in Estonia (at least during Soviet rule) was usually associated with a high status but lower wages than those paid to unskilled labourers (cf. Wesolowski 1977; 1979, even though his analyses are mainly concerned with the case of Poland). However, at least against the background of the Polish experience, where adaptation to the market econ-

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omy has been going on for a longer period of time, it seems reasonable to expect increased income differentials in favour of the medical profession. This example with doctors, teachers and labourers gives some indication of the importance of relating different capital resources to different contexts and fields of production. As was outlined previously, capital resources are not a constant quality but a fluid disposition that is very much dependent on the field concerned. For our purposes it seems that Wright's class analysis (reinterpreted from a Bourdieuan perspective) provides a useful and interesting tool for examining the class structure in the Nordic and Baltic countries. However, it needs to be complemented with a systematic analysis of different forms of capital, their contents and consequences. We are particularly interested in the relative value of capital in different fields for different class fractions, for men versus women and for different ethnic groups. Similarly, we are interested in the typical composition of capital in different class groupings, men and women, and in different ethnic groups. The latter approach represents a way of exceeding conventional class analysis. At a structural level, we are interested in describing the changes that have happened in social fields and doing this in a way that is not possible within the framework of those fields. *

One way to deal with economic capital (see Wright 1985) is to focus on the following dimensions: 1) ownership (economic assets), 2) decision-making and 3) autonomy. Ownership includes all forms of economic capital, including personal competencies, but the main interest is with the ownership of physical capital (machines, technology, etc.) and with the right to make decisions concerning investments (what is produced, budget, size of labour force, etc.). From an empirical point of view it will be particularly interesting to look at the forces at play in the privatization process; which sectors have been involved in this process, who are the new "owners" of market economy, what kind of capital is invested in new small companies, etc. Decision-making is included in nominal ownership and/or political instances, but it also includes a substantial number of wage earners in production. By raising questions related to economic decision-making, attention is drawn more specifically to the labour process. In empirical terms it would seem useful to take departure from a higher degree of differentiation among wage earners with decision-making capacity. However, the issue here concerns not only the division and structure of decision-making; equally important is which decision-making disposition gives empirical results. If, for instance, we look at wages, it is of special interest how far these correlate with

Contextualizing Social Stratification

43

decision-making power or how they are filtered through field-specific localization, membership of a gender or ethnic membership. In Wright's analysis the issue of decision-making also includes different forms of authority of a nominal, task and sanctioning character. Again, the question of direct or more indirect connections between authority power and, for instance, field-specific wage forms is of special interest. Autonomy is at once one of the most fruitful and one of the most problematic forms of capital in Wright's analysis. It is fruitful in so far as the criterion allows us to make the distinction between subordinated and routinized jobs and those requiring initiative and independent control; it is problematic in so far as it is viewed as something that people possess to a lesser or greater extent.23 Little, if anything, is said about different forms of autonomy (such as about the differences between craftsman's autonomy and professional autonomy; cf. Kivinen 1989). The question of different forms of autonomy is above all of strategic significance if we consider the possibility of different groups to legitimize their position in different fields. In more concrete terms, the issue here concerns the way in which competencies (craftsman's, technical, administrative, caring) are valued on different types of markets. A l l forms of capital discussed above — ownership, decision-making authority, job autonomy — are relevant in the economic field. A l l of them are also proven tools for the study of class and production relations. In official class typologies that usually focus on formal characteristics (occupation, educational requirements, etc.) it is notoriously difficult to capture elements of informal power and systematically to analyse the role and impact of different power dispositions. In more elaborate class models (where the emphasis is on one type of power and/or capital resources), the meaning of the respective dimension is indicated in the actual model itself. The class structure is carved out empirically by specifying the access of different individuals to (or their lack o f ) power and/or capital resources (see e.g. Wright 1985; Goldthorpe et al. 1987). A s far as the class researcher is concerned the main objective is to localize classes and strata and to deduce the empirical effects, and to a lesser extent to study the origins, social contexts and maintenance of the stratification. Access to and the meaning of different power and capital resources to the individuals and groups in different sectors of the economy may be touched upon, but they are usually secondary concerns. Although Erik Olin Wright has a theoretically elaborate set of tools for analysing the division of power resources in production, this does not mean to say that these tools in the standard interpretation are more sensitive to economic capital or production that those of Bourdieu's. In a concrete analysis of the United States and Sweden, the class variables (the independent

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Hâkon Leiulfsrud, Peter Sohlberg

variable) is interpreted by Wright as a thoroughgoing variable from the vantage-point of very general contexts (social structure, territorial borders, political systems, the family system, etc.). Class conflicts are interpreted in terms of general system conflicts, without giving due attention to field-specific or organization-specific circumstances. Sensitivity to the contextuality of capital is low, as is the case with most structurally oriented class studies. 4 The linking up of capital à la Bourdieu to different fields provides an excellent opportunity to study class processes in sociologically meaningful contexts and also to identify the underlying mechanisms behind their maintenance. For instance, a systematic analysis of the similarities and differences in the decision-making authority of men and women or in their job autonomy in different fields and sectors of the economy, helps to uncover the extent and magnitude of gender stratification. In more concrete terms, an issue of focal concern is to study how far the decision-making authority and autonomy of women differs systematically from those of men within the economic and social fields. To what extent is patriarchy absolute or specific to different fields? By varying the perspective and looking first at the position of women within specific fields and then at their position in more general terms, we should be able to produce a fuller picture of gender stratification than is currently provided by more conventional modes of analysis. Reverting now to fields as arenas on which individuals or institutions are waging their struggle for shared resources, that struggle provides a useful parameter of social change. If, for instance, we were to find that women or some other discriminated group had succeeded to strengthen its power positions within a certain field, this in itself would be an indication of social change within that field. If this pattern were repeated systematically across different fields, we would be looking at a more general structural change. As arenas for the power struggle of different actors, fields are best illustrated by concrete phenomena such as the privatization programme that is currently under way both in the Nordic countries and in the Baltic states. The rate at which government property is being sold; what is being sold (industry, land, service companies, etc.); how it is sold (to employees, the general public, selected market actors) is very much dependent on the relative power positions of different actors. It is therefore necessary to focus on different groups, parties and organizations and their collective power resources.

5.2

The Development of the Economic Field

Our "structuralization" of Bourdieu's theory implies a structural perspective on the development of social fields, i.e. an externalization of the focus of the analysis in relation to specific fields. Structural development is related to the

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45

change of social fields. In this context attention is shifted to different actor strategies for converting, maintaining and obtaining new capital. The adoption of a structural perspective also means that we can no longer avoid the question of the relationship between different social fields or the question as to which of these fields is the primary one. Michael Mann (1986, Iff) has proposed one way of dealing with power resources in a less ad hoc fashion, so that all social fields can be covered: society, for Mann, consists by definition of overlapping and interconnected networks of power. From this vantage-point it becomes possible to study continuity in social change. Researchers today have not yet reached consensus on the distinctive system characteristics of either the Nordic or the Baltic countries.25 During the 1980s there were clear signs both in Sweden and in Finland of a search for ever new corporatist solutions, at the same time as these solutions provide the basis for dealing with the ongoing recession. In Sweden, for example, the state has adopted a central role in relation to the labour market parties as a mediator in the process of deregulation, where the tendency is from centrally negotiated labour contracts to local contracts. In the Baltic countries, the ongoing market revolution is also an essentially political project. The command economy, in the sense of a bureaucratically coordinated and controlled economy, is having serious difficulties in adapting to the changing market needs and demands. In the light of what some sociologists have described as the "disorganization" of capitalism in the west (Offe 1985; Lash, Urry 1987) and the collapse and crisis of the planned economy in the east, the (future) role of women in production is also called into question. What implications, in terms of power resources, will there follow from the increased marginalization and exclusion of women from production in a situation of virtually full wage employment among women? One useful strategy for studying the economy in the Baltic countries is to adopt a resource perspective and to focus on the role of the central state vis-à-vis individual business companies, the relationship between company management and the shopfloor, and the relationship between the formal and informal economy (see e.g. Kornai 1992). The question as to whether companies will continue to be controlled by government directives and decisions, depends in large part on the outcomes of the ongoing privatization process. Our main concern, however, is with the control of power resources at the company level. Although we will probably discover major differences between individual companies and across different branches, we are particularly interested in studying how power is divided along different lines, in the relative power positions of management and labour, skilled labourers and unskilled labourers, men and women, Baltic and non-Baltic groups. The relationship between the formal economy (wages) and the informal economy (the exchange of goods and services, and black markets) is obviously another

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central concern as regards both organized groups and individuals. However, in our own project we will only be able to look at individuals and (indirectly) at the dependence of households on the informal economy. The future development of the Baltic economies will be largely determined by the way in which different actors succeed in managing the transition to a more market-oriented model of the economy. Old institutions will be pulled down and new ones set up. In the midst of such profound changes the question of continuity is essentially one of how capital assets can be converted. Depending on the position of the actors in the previous system and on their potential in the new system, we will be seeing both strategies in which the aim is to maintain the status quo and those that are geared to change. The transformation of capital and power will occur both at the legal level and also at the informal and institutional level. The successes (or failures) of old and new market actors in overcoming obstacles in the Baltic economies is obviously an empirical issue. These obstacles include not only restraints within legally regulated areas; in order to succeed people need also to have a thorough familiarity with the informal "rules". An underdeveloped financial system with inadequate legislation, combined with general political instability and uncertainty, gives "insiders" important strategic advantages that are beyond the reach of many West European companies, or which they have to buy from those who have their roots in the old system. Even at the basic and concrete level of selling goods to consumers by installments there remains considerable uncertainty. It is difficult to obtain credit information, and it is even unclear how securities are to be regulated. In addition to these fundamental problems of orientation in a situation of basic uncertainty, there is also the problem of varying attitudes and values. Traditional values such as employment security and social benefits (medical care, children's day care, holidays) are given priority over and above the maximization of profits. The social dimension creates definite problems for the implementation of a pure system of market economy. The experiences so far of the privatization of state-owned companies, particularly in Russia, suggest that a substantial proportion of economic capital (the insiders' share, i.e. employees and company management) derives from the actors who occupied a strong position in the old Soviet system. As far as economic experts are concerned this is regarded as a serious obstacle to higher efficiency in production. On the other hand, this view does not take into account the capital resources that are possessed by these actors in the form of their knowledge of the previous and current circumstances and conditions of running a Russian company in contrast to a West European one. The above examples provide some illustrations of the integration of symbolic and economic capital. The ability to control this combined "field"

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is a very significant asset indeed for those actors who are familiar with the system. At the same time, we may note that a stratification analysis which only takes into account traditional economic resources, is wholly inadequate. However, it is also naive to deny the fundamental role of the economic field in creating social space in Bourdieu's sense.

6

Concluding Remarks

In this paper we have attempted to outline a perspective on stratification that takes departure from the notion of power resources. The purpose has been to create an approach that is sensitive to the complexities and the dynamics inherent in those resources. Further, we have discussed the importance of contextuality, which will allow for comparisons and generalizations in spite of those complexities. The most systematic contribution towards creating this contextuality has been made by Pierre Bourdieu in terms of social fields. We have illustrated the problem by exploring that contribution, which we feel needs to be complemented by an analysis at the structural level as well as in the economic domain. At the same time we have also drawn attention to the need for a more systematic analysis of social fields at an aggregate level. In the treatment of economic power resources, we suggested that a suitable complement is provided by E.O. Wright's analysis of economic forms of capital, originally intended for purposes of class analysis. However, power resources are not just "positive assets"; for class, gender and ethnic membership the question of exclusion from social fields and the consequent low level of resources must be described and explained. In sociological terms negative capital has a different meaning from low capital resources. However, both Wright and Bourdieu also look at resources in terms of dimensions extending from a low to high level. In general the analysis of the working class and various semi-peripheral economic groups remains a more or less marginal issue for both Wright and Bourdieu; both are more preoccupied with inclusion rather than exclusion. Theirs is not a sociology of the subordinated or the marginalized. In our concrete examples we have argued that it is necessary to take a firmer and more determined approach than Bourdieu does to the structuration of social space. This implies that the stratification model which is adopted as a starting point for the analysis is largely grounded in economic power resources. The next step in the analysis is to study how social and symbolic power resources are converted into economic power resources, but also to

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look at the independent impacts of non-economic power resources on the respective fields. Finally, our analysis must also cover the relations and connections within different social fields and changing valuations made within them from a macro perspective. The substantial content of such an analysis of society and stratification can only be revealed by empirical analyses.

Notes 1

A more general sociological discussion of the concept of power lies beyond the scope of this paper. For useful theoretical overviews, see e.g. Steven Lukes (1974; 1986) and Dennis H. Wrong (1988). For a discussion of sociologically relevant power resources, see Mann (1986, cpt

2

3

4

5

6

This applies not only to class and ethnicity but also to the category of gender, as is clearly evident in the recent feminist discussion on the relationship between sex as a biological category and gender as a social category (see e.g. Irigaray 1985; Threadhold 1990). There are only a handful of class and mobility researchers who can be said to have overcome the contextuality problem. In most cases the same class models are applied even in comparisons involving countries with very different system characteristics (see e.g. Wright 1985; Erikson, Goldthorpe 1992a). Sometimes the model is chosen on the basis of the model's empirical explanatory value in the respective country (see e.g. Marshall et al. 1988; Erbslöh et al. 1987). The contextuality problem is always there, regardless of whether one uses universal or national class typologies. If in the former case one remains captive to coding directives and operationalizations that are suited to the situation in one country, there can be no guarantee that it is relevant in some other country. (Cf. the discussion by Marshall et al. 1988: 40ff on "semi-autonomy" within E.O. Wright's comparative project). If in the latter case one starts out with national class models, then questions will immediately be asked about the possibility of using comparable class categories. However, there are some (classical) works which draw a parallel between mobility patterns and the level or degree of social development in society (cf. Smelser, Lipset 1966; for a critique of this line of thinking, see Goldthorpe 1966: 651ff). Erikson and Goldthorpe and their colleagues in the CASMIN project ("Comparative Analysis of Social Mobility in Industrial Nations") make an interesting and important exception to the rule. One of the chief concerns in this project is to follow up and elaborate on the thesis presented by David L. Featherman, Frank Jones and Robert M. Hauser (1975) on the tendency for mobility patterns to converge in modern industrial countries. Adding certain qualifications to the FJH hypothesis, Erikson and Goldthorpe believe they have evidence that 1) the economy and the effects of the family household can be modified through active state intervention and that 2) part of the variation in "social fluidity" between different nations can be explained from the vantage-point of social inequality: the higher the degree of inequality in society, the higher the degree of mobility (Erikson, Goldthorpe 1992b: 292). However, it remains to be seen what kind of consequences these results will have in their future comparative efforts. For our purposes of macro-level analysis it is important to take into account the positions of Finland, Sweden and the Baltic states in relation to the world economy: For example, what are the implications of the former integration of Lithuania into the Soviet system? What kind of relationship does Lithuania have with western economies, and how does this relationship differ from the position of Sweden, for instance?

Contextualizing Social Stratification 7

8

9 10

11

12

13

14 15

16

17

lfi

19

20 21 22

23

M

49

By sectorization we refer to divisions of society into areas or aspects that do not follow any explicit stratification dimension. By contrast, stratification dimensions may reappear within different sectors, even though this is quite exceptional. One example of such an exception is the Marxist distinction between base and superstructure; both of these sectors involve stratification dimensions (see e.g. Althusser, Balibar 1970; Poulantzas 1978). The reason why Giddens' sectorization is regarded as functional rather than institutional/structural is that his definition of dimensions is mainly concerned with activities in very general and functional terms. He has the following definitions of sectors in society: Capitalism: "Capital accumulation in the context of competitive labour and product markets"; Surveillance: "Control of information and social supervision"; Military Power: "Control of the means of violence"...; Industrialism: "Transformation of nature"... (Giddens 1991: 59). See e.g. Parsons' highly generalizing history-writing in his Evolution and Society (1966). The sex/gender discussion during the 1980s can be regarded as a serious attempt to break down this dichotomous thinking (cf. note 3 above). A good example are the ideal-type activities ("teleological", "normative", "dramaturgic" and "communicative") that Habermas (1991) relates to different worlds ("objective world", "social world", "subjective world"). Resources or assets are shared in so far as the field is an expression of relations of domination and accordingly of an unjust or hierarchic division of the resources/assets available within the field concerned. See Donald Broady's Sociologi och Epistemologi —Om Pierre Bourdieus författarskap och den historiska epistemologi (1990) for a useful discussion of Bourdieu's concepts. As we can see from these examples, Bourdieu is chiefly interested in the elite groups of society. In this example the conversion takes place across generation boundaries, with parents investing money in their children's education. One problem that (to the best of our knowledge) is not discussed by Bourdieu is whether different forms of capital are commensurable in terms of volume. In operational terras: Does there exist a certain unit of cultural capital that is equivalent to a certain unit of economic capital? If this is not the case, then how it is possible to refer to an accumulated volume of capital assets? Although the concept of habitus can be regarded as highly innovative, it does have long historical roots. Bourdieu himself says in an interview: "the use of the notion of habitus, an old Aristotelian and Thomist concept that 1 completely rethought, can be understood as a way of escaping from the choice between structuralism without subject and the philosophy of the subject" (Bourdieu 1990b: 10). Bourdieu's ideas of the generative principle of habitus and his interest in carrying structures and forms over time and between social fields, bears evidence of a structuralist heritage. However, an important difference in relation to emphatically structuralist thinking is that Bourdieu gives the structure a concrete content. This means that the structural analysis becomes a complement rather than a substitute for concrete descriptions. Bourdieu has a lot in common in this regard with (chiefly Danish) way-of-life researchers (Höjrup 1983; Rahbek-Christensen 1987). Note that "social space" is a more general concept than "social fields". Bourdieu discusses this argument in his book In Other Words (1990b: 128ff). For a useful overview of the reception of Wright's resource-based class model in his Classes (1985), see the contributions to the anthology The Debate on Classes (1989), edited by E.O. Wright. Wright's operational definition of job autonomy consists of a five-step scale from "no real autonomy" to "high autonomy" (cf. Ilion et al. 1989, codebook for Wright's project, variable 532). However, during the 1980s Wright has upgraded his theory for greater sensitivity to social mediation. For instance, it is now recognized that individuals do not simply adopt one class position. In order to get closer to the class structure, we need to have a strategy that also takes

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Hâkon Leiulfsrud, Peter Sohlberg account of multiple localizations (one person may have two different jobs); mediating class positions (kin networks and family circumstances); and class trajectories (class has not only a temporary side to it). See Wright (1989b: 323-331). The continuing debate on the crisis versus consolidation of the welfare state is a typical example of the disagreement that prevails.

References Althusser, L , Balibar, E., Reading Capital, New Left Books, London 1970. Becker, G., The Economics of Discrimination, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1971 (originally published in 1957). Becker, H.S., Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance, Free Press, New York 1963. Blom, R., Leiulfsrud, H., Alanen, I., Ashmane, M., Bankkovskaya, S., Nikula, J., Kivinen, M., Melin, H., Rannik, E., Ruutsoo, R., Siisiäinen, M., Sohlberg, P., Trapentsiere I., Veksh, A.,Social Change in the Baltic and Nordic States: A Comparative Study of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania during the first part of the 90ies, Research Proposal to the Nordic Social Science Research Council (NOS-S), 1992. Bourdieu, P., Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Harvard University Press, Cambridge-Massachusetts 1984 (originally published in 1979). Bourdieu, P., Homo Academicus, Polity Press, Cambridge 1988 (originally published in 1984). Bourdieu, P., The Logic of Practice, Polity Press, Cambridge 1990 (a) (originally published in 1980). Bourdieu, P., In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology, Polity Press, Cambridge 1990 (b). Bradley, H., Men's Work, Women's Work: A Sociological History of the Sexual Division of Labour in Employment, Polity Press, Cambridge 1989. Broady, D., Sociologi och epistemologi: Om Pierre Bourdieus författarskap och den historiska epistemologin, HLS förlag, Stockholm 1990. Burawoy, M., H e Limits of Wright's Analytical Marxism and an Alternative, in: Wright, E.O. (ed.), The Debate on Classes, Verso, London — New York 1989. Carchedi, G., Classes and Class Analysis, in: Wright, E.O. (ed.), The Debate on Classes, Verso, London — New York 1989 (originally published in 1986). Cohen, S., Folk Devils and Moral Panics, MacGibbon & Kee, London 1972. Davis, K., Moore, W.E., Some Principles of Stratification: A Critical Analysis, American Sociological Review 10 (Apr) 1945, pp. 242-249. Duncan, O.D., Social Stratification and Mobility: Problems in Measurement of Trend, in: Sheldon E.B., Moore, W.E. (eds.), Indicators of Social Change, Rüssel Sage Foundations, New York 1968. Erbslöh, Β. et al., Klassenstruktur und Klassenbewusstsein in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Final Report, Fach Soziologie an der Universität-Gh-Duisburg 1987. Erikson, R., Goldthorpe, J.H., The Constant Flux: A Study of Class Mobility in Industrial Societies, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1992 (a). Erikson, R., Goldthorpe, J.H., The Casmin Project and the American Dream, European Sociological Review, Vol. 8., No. 3,1992 (b). Featherman, D.L., Jones, F.L., Hauser, R.M., Assumptions of Social Mobility in the U.S.: The Case of Occupational Status, Social Science Research, No. 4, 1975. Giddens, Α., The Consequences of Modernity, Polity Press, Cambridge 1991. Goldthorpe, J.H., Social Stratification in Industrial Society, in: Bendix, R.B., Lipset, S.M. (eds.), Class, Status and Power: Social Stratification in Comparative Perspective, The Free Press, New York 1966.

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Goldthorpe, J.H., Llewellyn, C., Payne, C., Social Mobility and Class Structure in Modern Britain, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1987 (2nd Revised Ed.). Habermas, J., The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1, Polity Press, Cambridge 1991 (originally published in 1981). Hall, S., Jefferson, T., (eds.), Resistance through Rituals, Hutchinson, London 1976. Hartmann, H., The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a More Progressive Union, in: Sargent, L. (ed.), Women and Revolution, Pluto Press, London 1981. Hecter, M., Principles of Group Solidarity, University of California Press 1987. Höjrup, T., Del glemte folk. Institute for European Ethnological Research, Copenhagen 1983. Ilion, L., Wright, E.O., in collaboration with Hwang, S., Arnim, Β., Comparative Project on Class Structure and Class Consciousness: Introduction to the Ten-Country Data Set, Technical Paper No. 22, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison-Wisconsin 1989. Irigaray, L , This Sex which is Not One, Cornell University Press, Ithaca — New York 1985. Jenson, J., Hägen, E., Reddy, C. (eds.), Feminization of the Labour Force: Paradoxes and Promises, Polity Press, Cambridge 1988. Kanter-Moss, R., Men and Women of the Corporation, Basic Books, Ine, New York 1977. Kivinen, M., The New Middle Classes and the Labour Process: Class Criteria Revisited, Department of Sociology, University of Helsinki, Helsinki 1989. Kornai, J., The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1992. Lash, S., Urry, J., The End of Organized Capitalism?, Polity Press, Cambridge 1987. Lockwood, D., Class, Status and Gender, in: Crompton, R., Mann, M. (eds.), Gender and Stratification, Polity Press, Cambridge 1986. Lukes, S., Power: A Radical View, Macmillan, London 1974. Lukes, S. (ed.), Power, Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1986. Lysgaard, S,,Arbeiderkollektivet: En Studie i de underordnedes sosiologi, Universitetsforlaget, Oslo 1961. Mann, M., The Sources of Social Power, Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1986. Marshall, G., Newby, H., Rose, D., Vogler, C., Social Class in Modern Britain, Hutchinson, London 1988. Offe, C., Disorganized Capitalism, Polity Press, Cambridge 1984. Parkin, F., Marxism and Class Theory: A Bourgeois Critique. Tavistock Publications, London 1979. Parsons, T., Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey 1966. Parsons, T., Bales, R.F., Shils, E.A., Working Papers in the Theory ofAction, Free Press, Glencoe, 111. 1953. Parsons, T., Smelser, N. J., Economy and Society: A Study in the Integration of Economic and Social Theory, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1984 (originally published in 1956). Poulantzas, N., State, Power and Socialism, New Left Books, London 1978. Przeworski, A , Capitalism and Social Democracy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1985. Rahbek-Christensen, L., Hver vore veje, Ethnological Forum, Institute for European Ethnological Research, Copenhagen 1987. Rose, D., Marshall, G., Constructing the (W)right Classes, in: Wright, E.O. (ed.), The Debate on Classes, Verso, London — New York 1989. Siltanen, J., Stanworth, M. (eds.), Women and the Public Sphere; A Critique of Sociology and Politics, Hutchinson, London 1984. Smelser, N.J., Lipset, S.M., Social Structure, Mobility and Development, in: Smelser, N.J., Lipset, S.M. (eds.), Social Structure and Mobility in Economic Development, Aldine, Chicago 1966. Suàrez, P., The Nomenclature of the Visible: Towardsa Critique of Empirical Class Analysis, Paper presented in Poznan, Poland 26-30 November, 1989.

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Taljunaite, M., Reflections of Social Differences in the Prestige of Professions, in: Matulionis, Α., Taljunaite, M. (eds.), Sociological Research in the Baltic Soviet Republics, The Baltic Section of the Soviet Sociological Association, Vilnius 1986. Threadhold, T., Introduction, in: Threadhold, T., Cranny-Francis, A. (eds.), Feminine, Masculine and Representation, Allen & Unwin, Sydney 1990. Walby, S., Theorizing Patriarchy, Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1990. Wallerstein, I., The Capitalist World Economy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1979. Wallerstein, I., Social Development, or Development of the World-System?, International Sociology, Vol. 1. No. 1,1986. Wesolowski, W., Investigations on Class Structure and Social Stratification in Poland, 1945-1975, Warzaw 1977. Wesolowski, W., Classes, Strata, Power, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1979. Wright, E.O., Classes, Verso, London 1985. Wright, E.O., (ed.), The Debate on Classes, Verso, London - New York 1989 (a). Wright, E.O., Rethinking the Concept of Class Structure, in: Wright, E.O. (ed.), The Debate on Classes, Verso, London - New York 1989 (b). Wrong, D.H., Power: Its Forms, Bases and Uses, Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1988.

The Beginning of the Working Class Movement in the Soviet Union and Post-Socialist Societies

(1989-1991) Leonid, Gordon

1

The Emergence and the First Steps of the Working Class Movement in the USSR

1.1

Polyfunctional Social-Political Organizations in the World of Labour

The diversity of trade unions is not the only manifestation of the pluralism of the working class movement, of the whole set of organizations which represent labour in the system of industrial relations. It is also essential that in the initial period of the post-socialist evolution, as long as the problem of liquidating state socialism has not been completely resolved and as long as general social problems continue to play an important role in labour relations, the working class movement inevitably transcends the purely trade union frames and almost necessarily acquires a distinct and certain social political orientation. In such countries as Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussia the emergence of large-scale political working class organizations, mass political parties of the workers resembling communist and social democratic parties of the first half of the 20th century, is extremely improbable at the contemporary stage. Theoretical standpoints and the actual experience of Russia and Eastern Europe suggest differently: the politicization of the working class movement and the social and labour relations in post-socialist societies is revealed not so much in the formation of working class parties in the strict sense of the word, as in the formation of wide polyfunctional movements. The latter, in contrast to the "pure" trade unions and parties, unite in their activities the defence of workers' current interests (the trade union functions) with the struggle for one or another way of developing the whole society (semi-party, social political functions) and supporting a certain ideology (cultural-ideological functions) (see Gordon 1991).

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A classical example of polyfunctional organization is provided by the Polish Solidarity movement of the 1980s (but not the 1990s), which, although described as an autonomous trade union, was of course much more than just a trade union. In the former Soviet Union polyfunctional workers' social political organizations emerged as independent formations which were not directly connected with trade unions. 1 The first of these organizations, the United Front of Workers (OFT) emerged in autumn 1989. A major role in its formation was played by party apparatus functionaries and professional ideologists who in this way tried to strengthen their influence among the workers. In 1989-1990 this organization enjoyed more or less wide support only in the Baltic republics and in Moldova, where it united representatives of enterprises and where Russians and Russian-speaking workers were in the numerical majority. The low popularity of OFT in Russia led to the formation of new organizations of the same type by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in summer 1991, the so-called unions of workers. In 1992, in a situation of objective hardships connected with the acceleration of the reforms and subjective mistakes by the government, unions of workers and OFT together with communists and nationalists constituted the nucleus of the movement "Working Russia" (Trudovaja Rossija: TR) which stood up against the market orientation of the present Russian government. In practice the movement of workers' soviets (SR) which claims to have all-Russian significance but which actually is purely a leadership formation, coincides with TR. Soon, however, in the spring of 1990, an organization was founded which represents another type of the social political orientation of the working class movement — the Confederation of Labour. Workers' committees of miners of Kuzbass and Donbass and democratically-oriented strike committees of several major enterprises in other branches formed its basis. They were joined by workers' clubs in several cities as well as by the unions of workers of Kuzbass, Karaganda and Vorkuta, which united workers and employees of these regions (RK-KT). In autumn 1990 another all-union workers' organization was formed: the Union of Work Collectives (STK), which was a union of the soviets of work collectives of a number of enterprises, primarily in the branches of the military-industrial complex in Moscow and St. Petersburg. These soviets emerged in enterprises even before perestroika according to the legislation of that time. In the majority of cases they had as formal and bureaucratic a character as the official trade unions. In recent years, however, especially after the 1989 strikes, some of them became genuine bodies of workers. In STK there were represented both bureaucratic soviets which were under the influence of administration, as well as genuinely independent soviets.

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All the above mentioned organizations, according to both the content of their programme documents and their practical activities, represent polyfunctional and not purely political or purely trade unionistic formations. They participate in the political struggle and at the same time press for improvements in working conditions, strive to express the current demands of workers, and at the same time actively stand for a particular variant of social development as a whole. The social political orientations of RK-KT, T R OFT-SR and STK are very different, not to say contradictory. 2 The majority of organizations belonging to RK-KT, as testified by their documents and deeds, pursue a consistent course towards the development of political democracy and market economy. Of course, RK-KT stands for an all-encompassing development of the mechanisms of social protection. In Russia they continuously stress that they pursue the course of unconditional but critical support to the government. But the ideas of social protection and the criticism of the Russian authorities do not proceed here from the denial of market and democracy. On the contrary, RK-KT even in the difficult circumstances of the not too successful start of reforms, stands for the necessity of their further development. The critical element of the political course of RK-KT is here connected not only with the struggle against excessive hardships, placed on the shoulders of people, but also with the demands of further radicalizaron and deepening of the transformations. 3 The support for the reforms was even more clearly revealed in the opposition of the Ukrainian RK to its government, which in 1992-93 did not have the courage to launch such transformations. TR-OFT, on the other hand, are against market and pluralist democracy. They present the defence of socialism as their main aim. In fact, socialism is here intended as state planned organization of the economy and the leading role of the communist party in political life. As both of these phenomena have been strongly discredited in the mass consciousness, they attempt to "refine" them with the help of ideas of Russian nationalism, claiming that only state ownership and the power of the communist party can preserve the dignity and originality of Russia. In this sense this orientation could be called nationalBolshevik or national-communist. TR-OFT has used also vulgar internationalist terminology, especially outside the Russian Federation. In particular, organizations of this type in Ukraine operate in this manner. During the days of the August coup of 1991, the Moscow Union of Workers explicitly supported the poutchists. During the crisis situation in 1992-1993 when the liberalization of prices and the mistakes of the Russian government evoked dissatisfaction among a significant part of the population, TR-OFT took active part in the actions which were overtly aimed at disrupting the market reforms. In doing so they joined into coalition with the most aggressive

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revenge organizations, such as the Front of National Liberation or Russian Sobor. 4 STK was particularly active in 1991-1992 and then, as testified by many of its documents, occupied an intermediate position. In politics it stood for consistent efforts to overcome the authoritarian partocratic regime, but in doing so stressed the special political role of work collectives, of direct and delegated democracy. In economy, accepting the variety of ownership forms, STK claimed that workers of certain enterprises should have the exclusive right of their ownership, dealing with almost all problems of privatization under such a point of view. But it remains unclear whether such an ownership presupposes real denationalization and actual competition, or whether handing over enterprises (especially big military factories) to work collectives would mean retaining state support. On the whole the social political attitudes of STK resemble another attempt to create an ideal system of socialist society where in political life would dominate direct democracy, and in economy state planning would be united with the goods market, but without a developed labour and capital market. In a somewhat crude generalization we may say that STK stands for democracy without a market of full value. Nevertheless, in 1993 the positions of STK evidently weakened, if not became negligible. Although it needs to be stressed that social political movements of workers differ from trade unions, it is still worth mentioning that at the initial stages of the post-socialist development the difference is by no means absolute. The deep functional distinction between party-political and trade union organizations in most countries of the former Soviet Union do not become inevitable until the later stages, as was the case in Poland. So far, however, the polyfunctionality of the social-political movements of workers, as well as the growing politicization of trade unions, mean that such a distinction is not very significant. Social organizations such as RK-KT or TR-OFT have continuously taken part in conflicts related to the everyday needs of workers, and trade unions have in one way or another engaged in the political struggle. It is characteristic that during all major miners' actions in 1991-1992 both their social-political organizations — workers' committees and their trade union — NPG, practically acted like a united force. In 1992 the strongest and most experienced body of the workers' committees, i.e. the Soviet of Kuzbass Workers' Committees, declared that although it had so far consisted of direct representatives of mines and factories, the Soviet now regarded itself a union of both enterprises and independent trade unions simultaneously. 5 Some time later the Soviet of Workers' Committees joined the Kuzbass branch of the Confederation of Labour and started to operate as a regional inter-branch centre of the new trade unions. Similarly, the Workers' Committee of the city of Donetsk, which in fact was the centre of workers' committees and strike

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committees of the whole Donbass, has almost always acted and continues to act jointly with the NPG of the Ukraine. Similar processes are also typical of social-political organizations of other orientations. Syndicalist unions easily approach STK, and some old trade unions, especially on the enterprises of the military-industrial complex near to Working Russia or OFT. So the approximation of trade unions and social political formations constitutes an unquestionable trend in development in both branches of the working class movement. In this sense we cannot exclude the possibility that here at last could be realized the Polish model of the 1980s when "Solidarity" in the framework of a single organization performed both trade union and political functions.

1.2

The Specific Bipolar Character of the Soviet Working Class Movement

The working class movement in the former Soviet Union was formed under very peculiar conditions. Its development was determined by factors of two kinds. Firstly, there were the social relations that were characteristic of all those countries where the emergence of the Western model of democratic and market-based society (including labour market as one of its components) has taken place or is taking place now. As far as Russia is concerned, we are speaking specifically about a model which would hardly be identical to, for example, American or Swedish realities, but which would be based on democracy, market economy, ideological and cultural pluralism if the development of Russia were not reversed. The question of labelling such a model remains the subject of numerous discussions. Often it is called a capitalist one, but in our view it would be more accurate to talk about a model of democratic or social market economy as a post-capitalist for the western society and post-socialist for Russia and other countries that are departing from state socialism. Secondly, there are the still remaining relics of state socialist relations, and even more the relations which are emerging in the course of the crisis and disintegration of state socialism. In the development of the working class movement in the former USSR and the majority of societies which emerged on its basis, we can see both universal tendencies that are characteristic of all countries where market and capitalistic relations are emerging, and specific processes which are caused by the fact that market and democracy are emerging here not as the result of a transition from feudalism to capitalism, as usual, but of the disintegration of state socialism, the unprecedented post-socialist development (see Gordon, Klopov 1991; Gordon, Nazimova 1990). In this sense the working class movement in post-communist societies

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has a bipolar, dual nature, as if two trends were united in it: a trend stemming from the contradictions of the "normal" labour market, and a process caused by the contradictions of state socialism and the crisis of its disintegration (Gordon, Klopov 1993). In perspective the relative importance of the contradictions of the first kind (ordinary capitalist or post-capitalist antagonisms) will evidently continue to grow, while the role of the second kind of contradictions (contradictions of state socialism) will diminish. But in Russia in the late 1980s and early 90s, and indeed in general, the influence of state socialism factors was much greater than the influence of general factors pertaining to market economy (Gordon et al. 1993). Respectively, in order to understand the Russian working class movement of that period, our main attention should be focused on these specific and original features.

1.3

W a g e Labour and the Preconditions for the Working Class Movement in the Society o f State Socialism

In assessing the preconditions and the basis for the working class movement in the former Soviet Union, it is necessary to take into account the conditions that have been inherited from state socialism or that are being formed in the process of its disintegration. In particular, it is necessary to take into account that in the West (within the framework of "ordinary" development of capitalism) the working class movement emerged mainly together with the industrial revolution and the formation and the development of the industrial working class. Before the emergence of the class of free wage workers there was no social force in Europe that could become the basis of the working class movement. From the very outset the latter was included into social life mainly as the activity of industrial-type free wage labour which is continuously produced by capitalism. Post-socialist development proceeds very differently, especially in the former Soviet Union where it has been preceded by seven decades of domination of state socialism. One of the main consequences of this domination on one sixth part of the planet was forced non-capitalist industrialization and the formation of an industrial working class encompassing approximately 8 0 - 8 5 million people. The majority, up to 8 5 - 9 0 % of the working population was engaged in wage labour, i.e. a much greater portion than anywhere else or at any other time under capitalism. 6 Of course, tens of millions of wage workers in the Soviet Union were not free sellers of their work force, but dependent state employees (Zaslavski 1991). In any event within state socialism a new social force has emerged which has specific interests, which can be aware of its interests, which is capable of collective

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actions for defending them, of self-organization for the sake of this aim in enterprises, in certain professions or branches. The fact that within the framework of state socialism rank-and-file workers and employees were opposed by a certain kind of collective e m ployer, adds a noticeable peculiarity to these interests, but it does not eliminate the main point. The social interests of the main part of the wage workers did not by any means coincide with the interests of the ruling elite, party and state nomenclature, economic and military-repressive nomenclature, or with the interests of the state party as a special institution which acquired huge independence and its own inertia in the framework of state socialism. Without doubt, Soviet society developed and life was incomparably better there in the 1970s and 1980s than in the 1930s and 1940s. But throughout the four post-war decades the state socialist system, namely state monopoly by oppressing technology, economy and culture, was the main obstacle which slowed down the economic and social progress of the country and destined it to backwardness relative to the democratic societies based on market economy. Total nationalization was the main reason why in the mid-1980s, while the productive forces were of a comparable level, GNP and GDP per inhabitant (i.e. the most general indices of the level of economic development) were much lower here than in the industrial countries which were free from the limitations of state socialism. At the same time the inability of the administrative-command system to overcome structural disproportions led to a situation where even this relatively small social product was used in a most unprofitable manner for the population. The share of expenses, related to the excessive orientation to heavy industry, to unreasonable militarization, to privileges of the elite, was much greater in the USSR than in the West. According to official data (probably falsified to give a more favourable impression), GDP per inhabitant in the mid-1980s was 2 - 3 times lower in Soviet society than in the United States and the FRG (36 % and 38 %, respectively), while consumption per inhabitant was 4 - 5 times lower than in these countries (22 % and 28 %). In the 1960s and the 1970s the restraining effect of state socialism was revealed in relative indices. The West continued to extend its lead while the absolute standard of living increased (albeit very slowly). However, this happened primarily at the expense of a frantic consumption of natural resources rather than on the basis of healthy economic growth. On the contrary, the domination of state socialism and the preservation of existing structural disproportions, the cold war and militarism all acted to undermine the basis of the national economy. The development continued, but the future crisis became inevitable. It has been, and still is, in the objective social interest of rank-and-file wage workers to put an end to the system of state monopolistic socialism and

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replace it with a developed market system, something like contemporary democratic capitalism with mixed economy, a social market system, etc. At the same time, the interests of the state party as a relatively independent institution, the interests of the nomenclature which governed it, were in the opposite direction, i.e. in the preservation of the system that made party and state structures omnipotent and gave its leaders an undisturbed, sweet life. Apart from the objective opposition between the social interests of wage labour and the upper stratum of the party-state apparatus, an important precondition for the working class movement was to have a great proportion of workers and employees in the social structure and their concentration in major collectives, in major industries, factories, in institutes and administrative establishments. Such a situation emerged as a logical consequence of the total nationalization and the predominant orientation to the military industrial structure of the economy. Just before perestroïka in the USSR, rank-and-file workers constituted nearly 90 per cent of the active labour force, but if we also include kolkhoz members whose socio-economic position at that time was practically identical to that of agricultural workers, then the figure would be over 90 per cent — much more than in the capitalist countries at the time when the growth of the working class movement was at its height. The majority of them, some 50-60 per cent were engaged in big and very big enterprises with several thousands of workers. The very size of such collectives as well as the industrial organization of work formed many typical social and psychological features which in the whole world have been characteristic of the nucleus of the working class at the industrial stage of its development and which made everywhere this nucleus the main force of the working class movement. In Russia we must add to this factor a relatively high level of education of the industrial nucleus of the working class in the 1970s and 1980s. Many industrial workers in this category, particularly those in the age group 20-30 years, had graduated from secondary schools, some 10 per cent from professional schools (Klopov 1985). In this connection it is also very important that in the framework of state socialist relations the overwhelming majority of intellectuals become rankand-file wage workers. In the USSR in the 1980s, they constituted 20-25 per cent of the labour force. At the same time the social organization of intellectual work has over the last decades acquired an increasingly industrial structure. Large numbers of engineers, constructors, scientific researchers, teachers, physicians, journalists became part of almost the same size of work collectives as the industrial workers (and often parts of the same collectives). At the same time the relatively high level of education of the mass intelligentsia created additional possibilities for accepting democratic values by it.

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There is no doubt that total nationalization put rather large groups of rank-and-file employees in a position where they performed the role of representatives of the administrative and ideological system which was alienated from the people. In fact the main social interests of engineers or teachers, even of lower civil servants, are the same as those of industrial workers. But in the eyes of the latter, they often seemed to be a particle of the elite power which stood above the mass of rank-and-file workers.

1.4

T h e Impossibility o f a Legal W o r k i n g Class M o v e m e n t in the Framework o f State Socialism

A s we can see, the living conditions of millions of wage workers in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, their social interests, level of education and psychological characteristics created the prerequisites for the development of a working class movement that was objectively directed against the system of state socialism. The fact that there was no working class movement here up until the end of the 1980s, could be explained mainly by reference to the power of the repressive apparatus and by the ideological influence of the system (Gordon 1993). Direct military-police repression played the main role here. Suffice it to quote the shootings at the workers' demonstrations in Novocherkassk in 1962 and the following execution of the workers' leaders; this was the typical reaction of state socialist authorities during its domination to any even slightly large-scale mass action. International experience, primarily the Gdansk repressions in Poland in 1970, confirm the typical character of such a reaction. Nevertheless, the reason for the effectiveness of the terror against the working class movement in state socialist societies did not lie so much in the ruthless cruelty of the repression of mass actions as in the fact that all attempts of workers's self-organization (as well as of any other groups of the population) were suppressed from the very outset. Often, repression ended with the imprisonment or confinement of the most active workers in closed psychiatric institutions without any legal decisions. But even if the repression was confined to less severe methods — relieving from work, persecutions or public disgrace —the meaning of this intervention was still in the forcible suppression of an independent activity. Ordinariness of the authoritative regime, the evident easiness of the transition from administrative to criminal methods, and lastly the unfading memory of the period where millions of people were arrested and shot, created a psychological climate of strong unconscious fear of the authorities. In such a situation even relatively moderate repression (moderate when compared to imprisonment) often produced the same effect of submissiveness as direct terror. The

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so-called conditioned socio-political reflex was activated. Alongside these repressive measures, the emergence of the working class movement was hindered by ideological pressure and specific ingrained illusions in the mass consciousness about the state socialist society. In spite of its mainly formal character and the evident hypocrisy of the official propaganda, the repression had a considerable impact on the state of consciousness in society. This was not only because of one-sided information, which had been poured down throughout the individual's life without access to other sources. More important was the fact that the very nature of state socialism, its total nationalization, created conditions which objectively made it difficult to understand the anti-popular and anti-worker nature of the administrative command system. In Soviet society there were no individual private owners. This circumstance covered the essential difference, if not contradiction, between the interests of rank-and-file workers and the n o menclature, concealed the antagonism between the main masses of workers and the leading elite which formally consisted of similar employees of the state as the rest of the population, but as a matter of fact was the master of this state. In addition, there were several groups between rank-and-file workers, kolkhoz members, office workers and the nomenclature elite which occupied an intermediate position so that the transition from submission to the state to actual power over it acquired an implicit character and was very difficult to grasp by mass consciousness. In the framework of state socialism there inevitably emerged a certain state fetishism, the idea that the members of society equally serve an abstract state, and this state, like a higher god, equally takes care of all members of society and guides them. Fetishizing the state made it particularly difficult to understand the causal relationship between the hardships experienced by ordinary people and the state socialist system. The fetishized state seemed to be separated from concrete statesmen and bureaucrats in the eyes of ordinary people. All miseries were explained by their mistakes, negligence or ill will, while the system itself remained totally unconnected with the shortcomings of society. On the contrary, this idealized system which was identified with the party and the state, started to appear as a sort of higher protector to whom one may appeal against any bureaucrats who seemed to be simply its servants. On the whole, the pressure executed by the repressive mechanisms and the illusions of mass consciousness were sufficient to prevent the emergence of the working class movement in the pre-perestroika Soviet society, in spite of the fact that other prerequisites for such a movement were formed inside it long before perestroïka. But this leads to the opposite conclusion as well: in Soviet society as it was in the 1970s and 1980s, any more or less significant weakening of the repressive and ideological foundations of state socialism changed the situ-

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ation instantly and profoundly. Such a weakening meant the elimination of the main hindrances on the way of development of the working class movement, while the factors which promoted this development were preserved. Accordingly, instead of the situation of an absolute impossibility of the working class movement, the conditions for its accelerated development emerged. One of these conditions is the late beginning of the working class movement itself. Unlike in capitalist countries where working class organizations emerged almost at the same time as the formation of the working class, in Soviet society they emerged at a stage when there is already a highly developed industry in the country, when workers form the majority of the population and are composed of well educated, qualified and professional people. It is logical that the early stages of the working class movement can be skated over much more quickly here than is usually the case in the framework of classical capitalism.

1.5

The July Strike of 1989

Like any other living process, the working class movement develops in a wave-like manner, through a succession of ups and downs. However, in the early stages of post-socialist development (or more precisely during the transition to that development) the tendency of growth predominated. As early as 1987-1988, within 2 - 3 years of the beginning of perestroïka, usual labour conflicts in many industrial centres were no longer limited to complaints and appeals to higher authorities. More and more often they spilled over into collective action including cessation of work, group protests and hunger strikes. Of course, these were typically the actions of relatively small groups involving no more than a few dozen of people, and often they did not encompass the whole enterprise but only small parts of it. Consequently we can here speak only about the rudiments of a working class movement, about its embryonic forms (Katsva, Podkosov 1992; Monusova 1992; Temkina 1992). But importantly of course, these were the rudiments and embryonic forms of a genuine working class movement. At the same time the germs of independent working class organizations also began to emerge, in particular perhaps the first independent trade union formation in the period of perestroïka, the Union of Socialist Trade Unions, Sotsprof (founded in spring 1989; see Apraskina 1991). Later, the name Sotsprof was reinterpreted by its members as the Union of Social Trade Unions. The actual beginning of the mass working class movement was marked by the miners' strike in July 1989, which broke out in Kuzbass and in a few days embraced Donbass, Vorkuta, and other mining centres (see Komarovski

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1990; Todorov 1992). All in all up to half a million people joined the strike, which grew into a general strike comprising the whole mining industry. The coincidence of several circumstances led to the revival of the working class movement among miners taking on a mass character. It seems that particularly significant in this context was the peculiarity of underground work itself, where great risks links everyone together in a chain of mutual interdependence, strengthening group cohesiveness and calling for individual initiative, exceptional bravery and at the same time submission to discipline. These features are shared by miners all over the world. In the former Soviet Union, the dissatisfaction of miners, in spite of their relatively high wages, was intensified by their appalling working conditions and the high incidence of accidents at work. At the same time the presence of a considerable layer of well educated and energetic people among them made it easier to recognize the necessity and the possibility of changes. Later the experience acquired in the course of the strike was added to all this. Such an experience became at once an independent and very strong factor in the organization of workers. Therefore miners remained the vanguard of the working class movement even during the following years of the period under review. In many respects they were very much ahead of other groups of workers. The mass actions of miners remained an organic element of the working class movement. Miners themselves, in the resolution of their 1st congress that was held in June 1990 in Donetsk, wrote: "Our main problems are the same that the overwhelming majority of workers have". The first mass actions of miners in 1989 which designated the awakening of the working class, resembled at first an economic strike. Almost invariably, demands for better wages, improved safety and working conditions form the initial basis for a working class movement. But within the system of all-encompassing state ownership and centralization of economy — particularly in conditions when such a system is in crisis - specific questions concerning production and economy instantly come across the necessity to solve more general problems. Therefore in the course of the strike, during discussions on the package of the provisional demands with the governmental commissions, proposals of a general economic character — on changing the very operative system of the mining industry - were added to this package both in Kuzbass and in Donbass. However political demands also had a distinct presence in the slogans of the last thunder-like roar of the strike thunderstorm of 1989, the autumn strike of Vorkuta miners, directed against the inability or reluctance of the state leadership to improve the situation in the country. The force of these spontaneous mass actions in summer and autumn 1989 led to a situation where by year-end 1989 and in early 1990 steps were being taken to promote the democratization of the country. In particular, the workers of Vorkuta, during the above-mentioned autumn strike in 1989, were among

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the first to launch the demand for putting an end to the political monopoly of the CPSU. It seems that this fact had a major influence so that in early 1990 the Central Committee of the CPSU agreed to annul the 6th paragraph of the Constitution where such monopoly had been legally fixed.

1.6

W a v e - L i k e Growth in 1990-1991 Q

The working class movement continued to grow during the first half of 1990. The miners set an inspiring example to several small workers' organizations, clubs, circles and unions in other branches. The tendency to unite such organizations increased sharply, as did the tendency to form new associations of workers. In Kuzbass it led to the transformation of the strike committees of July 1989 into a system of city workers' committees, which was headed by the Oblast Soviet of Workers' Committees, and to the emergence of a larger social organization, i.e. the Union of Kuzbass Workers. A corresponding body was also formed in Donetsk: the city miners' committee, which was still colloquially referred to as a strike committee even after the strike ended. As the situation aggravated it actually spread its influence to many other centres in Donbass and other branches of industry in Donetsk. On the scale of the whole country, an analogous process led to the convening of the 1st congress of the independent working class movements which was held in late April and early May 1990 in the city of Novokuznetsk, the centre of the July strike. The congress proclaimed the foundation of the Labour Confederation in which several dozens of new democratic workers' organizations were united. It is true that among the members of the Labour Confederation only organizations of miners had really extensive support at that time. However, the very fact that dozens of independent working class movements proclaimed they were striving to unity and that they were giving their unambiguous support to democracy, had major significance at that time. The activities of miners and the activity of other working class organizations also had an indirect influence on the official trade unions in the former USSR. During decades of state socialism, these trade unions in no way expressed or protected the interests of workers. In fact, they were a specific element of the party-state machinery and they saw their main purpose as being to serve as "a transmission strap", transmitting political directives of the party to rank-and-file workers who were not party members. Official Soviet trade unions were proud of their dependence on the communist party. However, with the imminent collapse of the system of state socialism, in a situation where tens of millions of people saw a real possibility of genuine working class organizations emerging, there also occurred certain progress within the official trade unions.

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In a sense the miners' example also influenced the activities of the anti-democratic, procommunist wing of working class organizations. Such organizations, notably the United Front of Workers (OFT), emerged even before the July 1989 strike. The majority of them were formed on the initiative of local organizations of the CPSU, with the hope of gaining some influence among the workers. We cannot say that OFT organizations escaped the influence of the CPSU as a result of the growing working class movement, but the positions of independent elements strengthened in them. United fronts of workers played a more or less significant role only in the Baltic republics and Moldova, where they united Russian workers and employees in their unfortunate opposition to national liberation strivings of the people of these countries. Even with widening sphere of the working class movement, miners, and primarily the miners of Kuzbass, Donbass and Vorkuta, remained its main leading force for the most part of 1990. In July and October of this year they held two all-union miners' congresses in Donetsk. The main result of these congresses was the foundation of the Independent Trade Union of Miners (NPG). The strike in 1989 meant a transition from the embryonic stage to the mass stage of the working class movement, while the emergence of NPG reflected a similar transition in the emergence of new trade unions. 9 The strike organized in response to the appeal of workers' committees and the Congress of miners on 11 July 1990, on the anniversary of the July 1989 strike, was not less important in a general political sense. Unlike the economic strike of the previous year, the 1990 strike was purely political.10 Its main demand was for the Ryzhkov government to resign for it had not "guaranteed the implementation of the reforms and lost the confidence of the people". The total number of strikers and participants in meetings and demonstrations was roughly the same as in the previous strike at several hundred thousand people. Without doubt, this was one of the factors that in late July 1990 forced and enabled Gorbachev and his supporters to come to a compromise with the democratic forces headed by Yeltsin and to try to put into effect the plan of the reforms, known as the programme of 500 days. Unfortunately not only strong but also weak sides were revealed of the working class movement in connection with the July strike of 1990. The exclusively political orientation of the strike, which totally ignored economic problems, reflected the failure of the miners' leaders to pay sufficient attention to the needs of ordinary people's everyday life. In the long-term perspective, politics has to be the decisive factor in post-socialist development. But if in the course of political struggle it is not supplemented with a defence of existing life interests, one may lose mass support to this struggle. The attraction felt by young and less experienced leaders of the working class movement to politics is understandable and unavoidable. However, it is

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clear that such an attraction creates a feeling of detachment from the leaders among the rank-and-file workers and therefore becomes one of the causes of a probable decline after a purely political upsurge. The exhaustion which accumulates during the moments of increased activeness has the same effect. Therefore it is legitimate to argue that in autumn 1990 and in winter 1990/91 the miners' movement weakened considerably. The general decline in miners' activity in the autumn and winter months of 1990-1991 did not remain without its consequences. The new balance of forces allowed those who opposed the economic reforms and democratization to force Gorbachev into breaking his compromise with the democrats and drop the plan of 500 days. But in winter 1991 they launched a massive campaign to stop the reforms altogether. In fact, the upcoming coup d'etat could be anticipated, and the bloodshed in Vilnius in January demonstrated it absolutely clearly. It is more significant therefore that in spring 1991, a new wave of the working class movement evolved. The wave of strikes in the mining industry began to grow from March onwards. As in 1989, the key role was played by mass action in Donbass and Kuzbass. This time, however, the miners organically united their political and economic demands, striving to change the political leadership, bring in economic reforms and increase their wages. At the same time their leaders demonstrated the ability to launch serious proposals concerning the whole branch (e.g. the project of the General standard tariff agreement) and to negotiate with the highest governmental bodies. 11 It is true that at first some people in the Union government contemplated a forcible suppression of the miners. As the well-known scientist and public activist V.V. Ivanov (who at that time was a people's deputy of the USSR) testified, Prime Minister V.S. Pavlov discussed in March 1991 the question of "a demonstrative shooting at some miners' demonstration". 12 However the resolute attitude of the workers (and as it seems the position of the wiser part of the government) caused these plans to be dropped. Within a few weeks of the spring strike of 1991 it became evident that this time the mass actions of miners were not just a sign of the revival of their activity but that they had made a beginning for a new period in the development of the working class movement. Within a period spanning almost two years, from July 1989 to April 1991, the working class movement in the USSR remained predominantly a miners' movement. The great masses of workers felt a compassion and solidarity with the miners, supported them morally, but only relatively small groups of workers in other branches took an active part. In spring 1991 the working class movement came out of the mines. From the first days of April, millions of workers in enterprises representing most diverse branches in Byelorussia and Ukraine and several industrial centres of Russia took part in strikes, meetings and demonstrations. By the end of April,

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in reply to the appeal of the Russian Federation of Independent Trade Unions, more than 30 million people participated in the protests. And this time the workers, following the example of miners, started from the outset to organize regional strike committees (among others a Byelorussian strike committee was formed) and to present both economic and political demands. The working class demonstrated a mature understanding of the actual relationship between the political and socio-economic problems of our society: radical social transformations can only be realized by popular authorities, by the government with popular backing throughout the nation. These persons who do not possess such confidence, no matter how it may be explained, have to leave. The wave of the working class movement washed away the ' 'creeping plot" and forced the communist and national-patriotic conservatives to retreat. A new compromise was reached between the democratic forces and the centrists, but this time the democrats concluded it from a position of much stronger force than in autumn 1990. Thus, and this is the main point, the thwarting of free presidential elections in Russia was avoided. 13 As we now know, Boris Yeltsin became the first president of Russia in the elections of 12 June 1991. The democratic working class movement also had a significant role during the attempted coup d'etat in August. Without doubt the decisive role in the fight with the poutchists was not played by industrial workers but by centres of Russian authorities and the democratic general public in Moscow. The revolt was suppressed so quickly that the workers had no time to react. But it was not by coincidence that on the very first day of the coup Boris Yeltsin called upon the workers to start a general political strike. Such a strike can obviously not be organized within three days, which was enough to put an end to the coup. But the very next day after the President's appeal, several dozens of mines stopped working and meetings were organized in many of the biggest factories. It was evident that had the coup lasted longer, a general political strike would have been arranged. This perspective helped the democrats to gain confidence, to attain the neutral position of the army, to isolate the leaders of the poutchists. But let us not exaggerate. The dramatic events of April and August 1991 (as well as the July strike of 1989) represent the highest upsurge, the peak of the working class movement, but not its average. Taken as a whole, the new working class movement remained a movement of the minority. In a country with more than 100 million workers, it directly involved some 12 000 people, during the peak days several hundred thousand. Having said that we must not forget that before the second half of the 1980s, in fact before 1989, there was absolutely no working class movement in the former Soviet Union. In this respect it is hardly surprising that in the early

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1990s it remained a minority movement. In a general historical perspective, another aspect is important: a living and independent working class movement emerged from scratch within the space of just two or three years. And no matter how the post-socialist evolution of the former Soviet societies will proceed in the future, in the early 1990s a new working class movement had become an integral and significant part of their social life.

2

Post-Communist Working Class Organizations

Trade unions and other working class organizations which voice the actual interests of wage workers do not emerge on empty ground. Their growth and development may proceed in two ways: firstly, as a result of the formation of new organizations and movements which are in no way related to the previous system, and secondly, through transformation and renewal of the old trade unions. The events of the late 1980s and early 1990s have shown that in practice, both of these avenues were used.

2.1

From Pseudo Trade Unions to Genuine Trade Union Organizations: The Possibilities and Limitations in Transforming the Old Trade Unions

The July strike transformed the situation in the country so profoundly that as early as the autumn of 1989 and the spring of 1990 some people appeared among the leaders of the official trade unions striving to transform the organizations under their leadership into genuine professional associations whose main task would be to protect the labour interests of their members. Of course, it is highly likely that some of these people were motivated by an interest to remain in good positions or by cynical calculation of retaining their power by means of compromising with the new circumstances. But among those who tried to reform the trade unions there were also other kind of people. The dismissal of the Central Committee of Trade Unions of the Soviet Union (VCSPS) in the autumn of 1990 and the formation instead of the General Confederation of Trade Unions (VKP) indicates that these elements had led to tangible results. 14 This was particularly noticeable in the activities of the organizations that formerly belonged to VCSPS and that even before its official dismission formed the Federation of Russian Independent Trade Unions (FNPR). Unlike the all-union organizations, FNPR was not irreconcilably hostile towards the new working class movement at that time.

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In spring 1991 it supported large-scale political and economic mass actions by workers, proving that it is able directly to interact with them. The disintegration of the USSR, the liquidation of the central bodies of the union state, and the disappearance of the CPSU after August 1991 pushed FNPR even more further (and especially part of its leadership) on the road to transforming itself into a genuine trade union structure. In the new circumstances similar processes also began to develop in the old trade unions of the union republics. The mechanical elimination of party-state structures which formerly dominated the official trade unions, put them, so to speak, into the position of compulsory independence. Moreover, the state authorities of the countries which emerged in the post-Soviet space in the majority of cases do not attempt to exercise leadership over trade unions. In such circumstances the leadership of the old trade unions inevitably have to act independently. And if this leadership wants to retain its position in the future, it has to strive to gain at least some support from the rank-and-file members, which means it has to take into account their interests to a certain degree (as they are understood by the leadership). 15 In this sense the old trade unions in Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussia (not to mention the Baltic states) in the early 1990s ceased to be elements of the party-state machinery in the sense they had been before. Other things being equal, a radical reform of the old trade unions, say, the domination of strike or workers'committees in them, would be the best variant for forming the trade union side of the working class movement. Trade unions would instantly get a rich material basis, a developed organizational structure, and an experienced administrative staff. Alas, other things are hardly ever equal in the real historical process. Many decades in the role of an appendage to the party and state apparatus created in the old trade unions permanent ideological, organizational and social psychological traditions, which often appeared to be overwhelming. Passive resistance to or indifference of the apparatus led to a situation where in the old trade unions much is retained of the inheritance of the past: the cumbersome structure and apparatus, the distance to ordinary members, the non-acceptance of trade union pluralism and actual democracy. During the years of state socialism the official trade unions have become one of the least popular organizations in society. The first reaction of the official trade unions to the revival of the working class movement could only strengthen this sense of distrust. During the July strike of 1989, the leadership of VCSPS unconditionally supported the authorities; more, it was virtually an organic, almost unconscious unity. The trade union bosses of that time were hardly aware of the real meaning of the title of the final documents of the strike, which were called agreements between the representatives of strike (workers') committees "on the one hand" and the government and VCSPS "on the other" (which is precisely how it was worded in these documents!).

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So when in late 1989 and early 1990 the attempts at correction got under way, they were executed in a situation of general distrust towards the old trade unions. And although there remained less objective grounds for mistrust after these attempts than before, the public sentiments did not change everywhere. 16 The slowness and limited scope of the transformation of the former trade union structures into genuine trade unions is also caused by the fact that such transformation is by no means the only possible way of changing these structures. Official trade unions in the state socialist system were, of course, a servile organization which had nothing in common with genuine trade unions. However, this is not to say that pseudo trade unions were absolutely useless. The old trade unions performed other than actual trade union tasks, including those that are necessary not only in the framework of state socialism but also in any modern industry. Apart from the fact that they were one of the additional mechanisms ("transmission strap") for party-state administration of the economy, trade union bodies (especially at the lower level) formed a functional element in managing the structures of production. They were part of the administration of enterprises and institutions, this subsystem of it which performed the functions of distribution of non-financial benefits, reinforcing the workers and performing other social functions. Trade unions were not trade unions as such, but a so-called personnel management office, a social department of factory administration, etc. Disintegration of the state socialist mechanisms of economic management and the development of the labour market creates the need for genuine trade unions. However, these processes do not eliminate the need for such departments in the framework of industrial administration which perform the functions of social management. On the contrary, in the specific circumstances of economic reforms and the transitional crisis connected with them, the need for such structural units increases considerably. The growing role of payments in kind, the need to reduce and retrain personnel, plays a decisive role here. The transformation of the lower units of the old trade unions can thus objectively proceed in two directions: either in the direction of radical change in their activity, transforming into genuine trade unions, or in the direction of abandoning any ambitions to the role of trade unions and an explicit transformation into a constituent (and useful) part of the administration of enterprises. In the first case the content of activity will be changed, and it will be brought in line with the name. In the second case the content of activity will change insignificantly, but the name will be changed completely. Forces of habits, traditional links, experience, acquired skills and work methods, pressure from the apparatus, the whole arrangement push the old trade union organizations on the second route. Not surprisingly, in many enterprises trade

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unions become more and more explicitly administrative bodies, dealing with social problems. 17 Subjectively, this process is not represented in such terms either among the masses of workers or among the lower level trade union functionaries themselves. Moreover, in the practical activities of many subunits of the old trade unions one can see both specifically trade union and administrativemanagerial features. 18 On the whole we may say that in the early 1990s the tendency of transforming the old trade unions into an element of company administration was stronger than the tendency of transforming them into genuine trade unions, while at the higher levels the situation seemed to be the opposite. The majority of the leading bodies of the old trade unions either had to disappear or to become genuine trade unions. As a result, even if they are compelled to go over to performing the functions of genuine trade unions, leaders of the old trade unions often appear to express the interests of these groups of workers who are less than others interested in the consistent realization of the economic reforms and market transformations. Less qualified and less educated workers and workers at enterprises which are not adapted to entering the market system (militaryindustrial complex, the out-of-date "monsters" of heavy industry) are ready to support them. The hardships of the transition to market economy are felt most acutely here, and its future benefits seem to be more doubtful than anywhere else. Therefore the anti-reform and vulgar-socialist attitudes which are characteristic of the old trade unions, find compassionate resonance here (Gordon 1993: 57).

2.2

The Emergence and Development of New Trade Unions

It is natural that in such circumstances where attempts are being made to reform the state trade unions, and often in opposition to such attempts, totally new organizations of workers will emerge and develop. In reality both of these trends were present, unfolding in a process of mutual struggle and interaction. Moreover, the activities of workers outside the system of VCSPS, primarily the 1989 strike and the emergence of new organizations, i.e. the strike and workers' committees in the course of the strike, served as an impetus to attempts at transforming the old trade unions. At first the leaders of the new working class movement thought that there would be no need for new trade unions, that it would be sufficient to organize interaction between new workers' committees (strike committees) and the reformed old trade unions. But the limited scope of these transformations during the first months of the revival of the working class movement made it clear that another process was needed alongside the changing of the old trade unions: the formation of totally

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new trade unions, free of any connections with the inheritance of the VCSPS system. The actions of miners are highly illustrative in this respect. The fact that they needed a genuine trade union which would actually defend their interests, was understood by coal miners during the summer strike in 1989. The leadership of the official trade union of the coal mining industry also began to realize the need for change. From autumn 1989 onwards, they established direct contacts with representatives of the workers' committees which had emerged during the strike. And in March 1990, the 15th congress of the official trade union of the coal miners was held, with new statutes adopted and the leadership almost completely changed. However, the results of the congress did still not satisfy very many activists of the new working class movement. More than 100 delegates, a large part of the miners who were elected to the congress, left it. According to many of these miners who left the congress, the documents adopted at the congress were entirely acceptable as such, but the general atmosphere of the congress did little to dissolve the distrust towards official trade unions. The preponderance of the trade union apparatus functionaries and representatives of service institutions of the branch at the congress, the prevalence of boring words and phrases, the very type of the traditional "trade union activists" led many miners to the conviction that again their interests would not be properly defended. Therefore the representatives of workers in the state-public commission dealing with the supervision of the realization of the agreements that were concluded as a result of the strikes in 1989, i.e. the people who had been promoted by the strike committees in their time, started preparations for the formation of a new professional union of miners immediately after the workers had left the congress of the official trade unions. As a result of their activity the 1st congress of miners of the USSR was held in Donetsk in June 1990. In a special resolution adopted in Donetsk it is stated that "The existing trade union is not able to solve the tasks which have been set forth. The congress considers it necessary to create a really independent trade union of miners". The formation of the Independent Trade Union of Miners (NPG) was announced in the next, 2nd congress of miners which was again held in Donetsk in October 1990.19 Formally, almost another whole year was needed to complete the construction of NPG. The constituent meetings of the Russian NPG and International NPG (uniting all unions from the countries of the former USSR) were not held until late 1991. In reality, however, NPG was in operation from the end of 1990. Unconnectedness with the former traditions which differentiated NPG from the official trade unions, produced its characteristic features which in

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many ways were typical of the new trade union organizations as a whole. The most important of these was the ability to become more quickly (compared with VCSPS and its successors) aware of the main tasks and the specificity of trade unions during the period of collapse of state socialism and the formation of the market and democratic system. From the very outset NPG based its course of activities on combining the defence of the current interests of its members with political support for the economic reforms and democratization. In fact it was based on the acceptance of the inevitability and desirability of the change of the social formation. Freedom from the past also made it immediately possible to put into practice the necessary organizational changes that the old trade unions had not had the courage to start. The new trade union of miners emerged like any normal association of wage workers selling their work force, an association which was called for entering into equal relations with the employers, and not to be subordinated to them. Therefore, while forming NPG, the miners decided from the beginning that in contrast to the pseudo trade union traditions of the Soviet times, representatives of the administration who at state enterprises are the employers or their representatives, will not be included. The principle of separating rank-and-file workers from the administration has great significance for the formation of genuine trade unions in post-socialist society. Given the preservation of the previous situation where the leading persons of management were members of the same organization as the workers, it would be very difficult to go over from habitual submission to administration to opposition and discussions between trade unions and the same administration. The formation of NPG revealed another tendency that was characteristic of the new trade union movement: the abandonment of the rigid determinedness and uniformity of approaches to the definition of the initial basis of the union. In the previous trade unions an administrative- and branch-centred, in fact a corporatist principle dominated according to which trade unions were formed, as a rule, on the basis of ministries and government offices. Such a union was very convenient both for administrative bodies and for the pseudo trade unions attached to them. But this did not by any means guarantee correspondence with the needs and interests of the workers. In the mining industry in particular the ministerial and branch-centred union led to a situation where the miners themselves appeared always to be in the minority in their "own" trade union. Therefore NPG was formed in the form of an association of workers of mining professions who were engaged not only in the mining industry but also in other branches (construction of mines, underground, etc.). Unfortunately, the healthy attempt to unite workers in closely related occupations, while separating themselves from the employers, also had

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serious negative consequences. In practice it led to the decision not to accept as NPG members top administrators and workers in non-mining professions. In fact the majority of engineering and technical personnel were banned from membership of the new trade union. It is interesting that many top leaders of NPG, often former engineers themselves, were always opposed to such an approach. However, among the rank-and-file miners there was growing irritation against the "office", "the bosses", which easily spilled over to all engineering and technical personnel. Even though they work together with engineers and together with them perish in accidents, the majority of miners did still not want to see engineering and technical personnel in their union. In the years that followed the attitude towards engineers began slowly to change 20 . However, these changes do not proceed very quickly and by no means in all strata of workers' masses. So even today the hostility towards specialists among part of the miners is as characteristic a feature of mass consciousness as are the attempts to overcome such hostility among another part of workers. NPG is the most noticeable organization in the new trade union movement. However, the actual scale and significance of the process are determined by the fact that the formation of the miners' union was not a unique and exceptional event. In the majority of states gaining independence from the Soviet Union, the formation of new trade unions proceeds in a wide range of different branches. In this process the emergence of new unions is almost always connected with the acquisition of new forms and the widening of the organizational diversity of workers' associations. 21 Two independent trade unions in the field of civil aviation — the Federation of Trade Unions of the Associations of Pilots and the Federation of Trade Unions of Air Traffic Control Officers — have a corporatist character. Both of these unions unite workers on the basis of their belonging specifically to a certain profession, differing in this sense not only from the old Soviet trade unions but also from NPG to which workers of a wide range of close professions belong. Nevertheless, in the struggle for their demands both unions of aviators often cooperate. At the same time there emerged organizations that were formed on the basis of an extremely wide non-branch and inter-branch basis. The situation in the Association of Social Trade Unions (Sotsprof) is characteristic. Having grown up before almost all other new trade unions, before the strike in 1989, Sotsprof brings together very different trade unions which in some cases comprise a handful of people from one department, in others hundreds of workers from major companies, and in others still thousands of workers in a region. In addition, in its unions both workers and intellectuals are united. In the initial stage of post-socialist development the defence of economic interests often requires primarily a struggle against the excessive role of the

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state. The main difference of interests lies not between wage workers and employers, but between the very different participants in production, on the one hand, and powerful state monopolies, on the other. In these circumstances it is sometimes possible to bring together in the same unions both wage workers, cooperative members and even small entrepreneurs. This was true, for example, of the Association of the Independent Trade Unions of Small Enterprises, Joint Stock Companies, Cooperatives and Individually Owned Enterprises, the Association of Trade Unions of the Workers of Cooperative Enterprises, the Confederation of the Trade Unions of the Workers of Joint Ventures and the Trade Union of Small and Middle-Range Business, which appeared in the late 1980s and in the early 1990s. Many of these formations are engaged in successful entrepreneurial activities alongside trade union work. At the same time in some places, particularly in Moscow, Leningrad, in the Urals and in the Ukraine, small inter-branch unions of an anarchosyndicalist type were formed that were definitely oriented towards manual workers only. In addition to the entirely new trade unions which comprised hundreds if not thousands of Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian companies, there emerged strike committees. For instance, in spring 1993,3-4 per cent of those employed in big and middle-range companies in Russia spoke about the existence of such committees. Only in St. Petersburg were there about 50 permanent strike committees (Gordon, Temkina 1992: 133). Sometimes the strike committees were elected under the guidance of the new or old trade unions. But much more often, especially where only official trade unions operated, they were formed by independent groups of workers who had more or less wide support from the work collectives. It is important to stress that the formation of such independent strike committees is not necessarily connected with starting a strike or even with starting direct preparations for a strike. Often independent strike committees emerged as permanently operating organizations of workers who defended the interests of workers of their enterprise by means of a wide range of different methods. In fact they are the embryos, potential cells of new independent trade unions which, instead of the name "trade union" that has been discredited in the mass consciousness of post-Soviet societies, use the label of "strike committee", which is associated with the fresh glory of miners' strikes.

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The Size and Influence of Old and New Trade Unions: The Necessity of Trade Union Pluralism

At least so far there is no comparison between the old and new trade unions in terms of size; the old unions have several hundred times more workers in 22

their ranks than do the new ones. Even allowing for potential mistakes in the official trade union statistics, there are tens of millions of people in Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, Kazakhstan, etc. who pay fees to the old trade unions, while the number of workers who have received membership cards of genuine new trade unions, is counted only in tens and hundreds of thousands. Even if we count the semi trade unions of small entrepreneurs and cooperative owners, the total number of people involved in the new associations is not more than a few million people in all republics of the former Soviet Union. Amidst the rapid changes taking place in the early years of post-socialist development, however, size alone does not provide a very good indicator of the actual impact and influence of specific trade unions and trade union centres. For example, it is typical that in the March and April strikes of 1991 which were led by workers'(strike) committees together with NPG of Russia and Ukraine, and which were opposed by the old trade union of coal miners, not 5 per cent of the miners took part (which more or less corresponds to the number of members of NPG at that time) but between 30 and 70 per cent. Moreover, millions of people participated in peaceful actions of solidarity, collecting resources for the miners, etc., supporting the political and economic demands of the miners. And by the end of the strike (in April) hundreds of thousands of Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian workers engaged in the branches where only official trade unions existed, directly joined the strike.23 Generally speaking, the size of the old trade unions in Russia, comprising several million members, is a direct consequence of the compulsory character of trade union membership in Soviet society. This large number of members has a rather stipulated character. A large part of workers who were regarded as members of the old trade unions, remained in them by force of habit: according to the data of a special survey, 39 per cent indicated this was the case.24 The majority of workers who formally belong to the old trade unions are actually unorganized or semi-organized people who are not yet ready for deliberate collective action in the struggle for their rights. Today in Russia there are trade unions with very different memberships: new trade unions to which belong only those people who have with full awareness decided to collectively defend their professional interests, and the old trade unions, uniting both those workers who want to transform the former pseudo trade unions into genuine professional unions, and those people who pay their fees out of habit but who by no means are always prepared to take collective action.

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If we take into account not all but only the conscious and active members, their total number in the new and old trade unions would be approximately equal. They hardly comprise the majority of workers. Rather, this majority is composed of workers who may respond to the appeals of the new trade unions to the same extent as to the appeals of the old ones, regardless of their formal affiliation. Or, they may not respond to any appeals; that depends on the concrete socio-economic and political circumstances. The situation in which not all workers appear to be professionally organized represents a sufficiently widespread case of the state of labour relations in a market-governed democratic society. It is rather the rule than an exception. The peculiarity of such countries as Russia or Ukraine where such a situation is camouflaged by formally total professional self-organization, does not in fact constitute a major exception to this. Nor will be the very probable reduction in the size of trade unions in the near future, which may occur in the case of a general re-registering of members, for instance. Such a reduction will merely bring the formal statistics in line with the actual situation. Much more important is the fact that the separation and pluralism of trade unions in post-Soviet societies seem to have at this stage a more profound character than in many other countries. Such a separation is caused by the different genesis of old and new trade unions, their inclusion in very different political and cultural-ideological paradigms. At the same time the development of economic reforms for some time only intensifies trade union pluralism, adding to its ideological and political prerequisites the effect of socioeconomic factors. As was mentioned earlier, the spirit of vulgar-communist ideology with its egalitarian and anti-market attitudes will remain for a long time in the old trade unions, even if they become genuine workers' organizations. Accordingly these trade unions more often appear to express the interests and sentiments of these groups of workers for whom the transition to market relations is especially difficult for objective reasons. On the contrary, new trade unions often become the representatives of more qualified, better educated, more urbanized workers who are connected with industrial enterprises that more easily establish themselves into the market system, and therefore they tend to support market and democratic reforms more actively.

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Conclusions

3.1

Ideology and Anti-Ideology in the Working Class Movement

79

In a post-socialist society the working class movement is ideologically as well as politically divided into two main types: supporters of market and democracy, on the one hand, and supporters of state socialism, on the other. At the early stages of post-socialist development these views are manifested in the negation of opposite ideas rather than in affirming one's own. These ideologies can accordingly be labelled as "anti-totalitarian" ("anti-communist") and "anti-capitalist". The dividing lines are by no means watertight; different variants of ideologies will always overlap each other. Putting it briefly, the ideology of the working class movement at the early stages of post-socialist development is characterized by the same pluralism that is typical of trade unions and workers' social organizations. Unlike in the West where the working class movement, when it manifests itself in a pure form, has a more or less homogeneous social democratic ideology, the post-socialist working class movement is heterogeneous and coincides ideologically with non-working class political movements. In all these ideologies positive aims are not always very clearly stated; views on the undesirable course of development, on the enemy (opponent) are often more explicitly expressed. In the working class movement of the former Soviet Union and post-Soviet countries such as Russia and Ukraine, a distinction can be made between the following ideological trends: 1. The ideology of a "conservative" or "anti-capitalist" orientation is geared to preserving state socialism, public property, the system of state distribution and social protection. The main opponents of the working class are "corrupted bureaucracy", "emerging exploiters", entrepreneurs who are independent of the state (who are traditionally identified as the "class of the bourgeoisie"), new democratic movements and parties which express their interests, new political and economic elites. Such is the ideology of OFTTR-RS. 2. The ideology of a democratic or "anti-totalitarian" orientation pushes organizations of the working class movement mainly towards defending the interests of a worker as the owner of his work force, towards the formation of classical trade unions. The values of such movements include the development of market, equal rights of all forms of ownership, and the freedom of workers to demand an acceptable price for their work force from the employers. The private owner is regarded as the most suitable employer in this

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respect. The main adversaries of such movements are the old political and especially economic elite (nomenclature). These two main types form the opposite poles of the political spectrum but in no way exhaust its whole content. Particularly important is the fact that between these two poles different intermediate variants of working class ideologies emerge which could be labelled as the ideology of "the third way" of post-socialist development. Typical of it is that all elites in society, both the old nomenclature and the new one, are regarded as an enemy, and the situation should be changed by the workers and work collectives. In the working class movement in the former Soviet Union three such variants have been more or less clearly manifested: The first variant: "the working class" acts as the saviour. Ideas for transforming society and the economy, ideas of social protection are articulated in the terms of the traditional class approach. Ideas of labour democracy, realized through workers' control; transfer of property to the workers, and changes in the bodies of local authorities (elections on the class membership principle) are defended. This variant of the intermediate ideology is based on one of the myths of state socialism, i.e. the myth of the special role of the working class. But another, related myth — the myth about the leading role of the "vanguard party of the working class" — is usually rejected in this ideology. The second variant: hopes are mainly pinned on work collectives (and the soviets of work collectives expressing their interests). The aim is to enter the market (first of all privatization) in the interests of work collectives. As was mentioned earlier, these ideas are most actively expressed by STK, which proposes to give absolute economic independence to enterprises in the person of work collectives. The crisis is caused by the preservation of monopolistic production, centralized management of the economy and privatization in the interests of the existing nomenclature. It supports the ideas of market reforms — in the interests of work collectives. This variant of ideology is based on the idea of the special role of work collectives, their wish and ability to act like integrated subjects, their interest to become themselves the owners of the means of production. The third variant explicitly expresses that it belongs to the left-wing or socialist movement. In this connection highly expressive are the ideological positions of one of the small left-wing socialist formations in contemporary Russia, the so-called Movement of the Left Forces, People's Self-government. In the documents of this movement "the transformed" part of the party apparatus and "liberal " intelligentsia (the democrats) are regarded as the main enemies. According to the view of the ideologists of the movement, post-Soviet social development will be dangerous and undesirable for the workers if it leads to the "preservation of power and property in the new form in the

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hands of party-state bureaucracy and businessmen of the shadow economy"; and this development may become desirable and advantageous for workers in case of forming people's self-management in all the spheres. The movement defends the principles of social protection of the wage workers, democratic privatization by means of free distribution of shares to the workers in state enterprises. On the whole the ideology of the third way has some chance of further propagation within the working class movement. Under the slogans of "workers' self-management", on the one hand, and "social protection", on the other, particular groups of the conservative and the democratic movement respectively, may be carried along with the movement of the third way. Differences in ideologies, cultural and value orientations are added to the pluralism of trade union organizations and social political movements among the workers in post-socialist societies. Various types of differences reinforce and strengthen each other. The preservation of pluralist, heterogeneous forms is the most probable long-term perspective for the development of the working class movement in these circumstances.

Notes 1

2

3

4

5

6

Chronicle of the working class movement in the USSR 1987-1991. In: The Working Class Movement: Documents and Analytical Materials. Institute of Employment, 1992. Basic documents characterizing the orientations of the main social political workers' organizations. See e.g. "Nasha Gazeta" May, June, July 1990, in which the documents of the 1st Congress of Working Class Movements and of the Confederation of Labour (which was founded by it) have been published; The 1st (Constituent) Congress of the United Front of Workers. Documents and Materials. Leningrad, 1989; Union of Work Collectives. Documents and Materials of the Constituent Congress on 8-10 December 1990; Constituent Congress of "Trudovaya Rossija" (Working Russia), Sovetskaya Rossija, 1992,27 October; Russia Today. A Political Portrait in Documents, 1985-1991. Who is Who. Political Moscow 1993. This viewpoint was once more supported by the 2nd congress of NPG, which was held in Vorkuta in December 1992 (Nasha Gazeta, Kemerovo, 29 December 1992). See "To the people of Russia, to all the peoples of the Soviet Union" (Proclamation of "Trudovaya Rossija", published in June 1992); What are pursuing the people's representatives who call upon a strike? Izvestija, 4 September 1992. The future belongs to normal trade unions; Aleksandr Aslanidi, chairman of the Soviet of workers' committees of Kuzbass on the development of the working class movement in the region. Nasha Gazeta, Kemerovo, 7 January 1992. Data on the composition of the employed population, the number of workers and employees in the 1970s and 1980s were published in annual reports of the Central Statistical Department of the USSR (later renamed as the State Committee of Statistics of the USSR). The last annual report of this kind — the National Economy of the USSR in 1990 (in Russian) — was published in 1991. More detailed data are contained in specialized statistical reference books which are published from time to time, for example: Labour in the USSR. Statistical Reference Book. Moscow, 1988 (in Russian). A detailed analysis of this statistics is presented in Social Development of the Working Class of the USSR. Articles on history and sociology. See also Gordon, Nazimova 1985.

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9

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20 21

22

Leonid Gordon Statistical Report, 1990, no. 9:15; no. 8: 29-31. The description of the events which characterize the development of the working class movement in 1990-1991 is here primarily based on press reports. Particularly informative in this respect are such periodicals as "Nasha Gazeta", which is published in Kemerovo, and "Informational Bulletin" published by the Moscow Information Centre of the Working Class Movement KAS-KOR. Interesting, too, is the Chronicle of working class movement in the USSR (19871991) in: Working Class Movement: Documents and Analytical Materials, Institute of Employment, 1992 (in Russian); the Chronicle of the working class movement in coal mining regions. In: Miners' Movement: Documents and Analytical Materials. Part I. Institute of Employment, 1992 (in Russian). Materials of the 1st Congress of Miners of the USSR; Materials of the 2nd Congress of Miners of the USSR. In: Miners' Movement: Documents and Analytical Materials. Part I., Institute of Employment, 1992 (in Russian). Resolution of the political strike on 11 July 1990. In: New Movements of Workers. Part II. Institute of Comparative Politology, 1992 (in Russian). The main documents characterizing the demands and the positions of workers in spring 1991 are presented in the book New Movements of Workers. Part II. Institute of Comparative Politology, 1992 (in Russian). Time and place: Vyacheslav Ivanov in the "Rebellious library" on 20 August 1991. Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 19 August, 1992. This circumstance has been repeatedly stressed by Boris Yeltsin. In particular, in his statement to the inhabitants of Kuzbass on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Kemerovo oblast, he said: "Russia remembers how great, if not decisive influence the miners' strikes had on the development of the democratic movement in 1989-1991. The influential actions of miners at the decisive moment of history made it possible to break the resistance of the party nomenclature". (Nasha Gazeta, Kemerovo, 28 January 1993). XIX Congress of the trade unions of the USSR. Informational Bulletin no.l. Vice chairman of FNPR, V. Kuzmenyuk says: "Today we (society, economy) are going over to the capitalist system. The majority of people capable to work ... will live exclusively at the expense of selling their live labour — their work force. And in order to sell this good, one's labour, as profitably as possible — we need to unite ... The trade union is a collective organizer of the most profitable selling of work force". Trod, 18 June 1992. People's attitudes to trade unions. Express-report of VCIOM, 1990, September: 3; Reports of VCIOM, 1993, May, 19. On the road to social partnership. Development of social-labour relations in contemporary Russia. Special supplement to the bulletin Constitutional Reports. 1993. Yu. Milovidov. What keeps us in trade unions? Trud, 5 November, 1992. For a more detailed analysis, see the 1st Congress of Miners of the USSR. 11-15 June 1990, Parts 1-2. Donetsk, 1990; Shorthand records of the 2nd Congress of Miners of the USSR (22-26 October 1990), Donetsk, 1990, which includes the resolution of the 1st Congress of Miners of the USSR on the preparations to the formation of an independent trade union and the statement of the 2nd Congress of Miners, the constituent Congress of the independent trade union of miners. Nasha Gazeta, Kemerovo, 19 November and 29 December, 1992. For more details on the characteristics of the new trade unions, see Who is Who, 1993 (in Russian). The reference materials at the Russian-American Foundation of Trade Union Studies and Training are also useful sources. The number of members in official trade unions before the 1990s was regularly published in state statistical reference books (see e.g. Social Development of the USSR. Collection of statistical data 1990:66). As for the new trade unions, the data given here are based on estimations by their leaders. In 1992 the collection and categorization of such data was done by V. Rupetz (see New Working Class Movement. Informational and Analytic Bulletin, 1992, no. 3-4; Labour

The Beginning of the Working Class Movement

23

24 25

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Relations, 1992, no.l.) In individual cases the author, being a consultant for some unions, had the opportunity to correct their self-estimations. Chronicle of the working class movement in the coal mining regions. 1989-1991. In: Miners' Movement. Documents and Analytical Materials. Institute of Employment, 1992: 22-24. Trud, 5 November, 1992. This final section was written in collaboration with A.A Tyomkina.

References Apraskina, Ye., Sotsprof—an informal trade union. New Working Class Movement, Informational Bulletin, 1991, no.l. Chronicle of the working class movement in the coal mining regions 1989-1991, in: Miners' Movement, Documents and Analytical Materials, Institute of Employment, 1992. Economic and social changes: Monitoring the public opinion, 1993, no. 3. Gordon, L.Α., Articles on the Working Class Movement in the Post-socialist Russia, 1993. Gordon, L.A., Economic and social changes: Monitoring the public opinion, 1993, no. 4. Gordon, LA., Klopov, E.V., Stalinism and post-stalinism: the necessity of overcoming, in: Interpreting the Cult of Stalin, 1989. Gordon, LA., Temkina, Α., Crisis of the working class movement in the post-socialist Russia: sources and searching the way out, in: Labour Relations in the Course of the Modernization of Economy, Institute of Employment, 1992. Klopov, E.V., The Working Class of the USSR. Tendencies of Development in the 60s and 70s, 1985. Komarovski., V.V., Kuzbass, Hot Summer of89,1990. Milovidov, Yu., What keeps us in trade unions?, Trud, 5 November, 1992. Nasha Gazeta, Kemerovo, 19 November and 29 December, 1992. Rakitskaya, G.Ya., On the roads to one's own ideology. (Ideas and demands of workers in the course of the fourth Russian revolution). Resolution of the political strike on 11 July 1990, in: New Movements of Workers, Part II, Institute of Comparative Politology, 1992. Rupetz, V., Labour Relations, Informational and Analytic Bulletin, 1992, no. 1. Rupetz, V., New Working Class Movement, Informational and Analytic Bulletin, 1992, no. 3-4. Social Development of the USSR, Collection of statistical data, 1990. The 1st Congress of Miners of the USSR, 11-15 June 1990, Collection of materials, Parts 1-2, Donetsk, 1990. The Chronicle of the working class movement in coal mining regions, in: Miners' Movement: Documents and Analytical Materials, Part I, Institute of Employment, 1992. The Chronicle of the working class movement in the USSR (1987-1991), in: Working Class Movement: Documents and Analytical Materials, Institute of Employment, 1992. Todorov, I. Ya., Miners' strikes in Donetsk, in: New Movements of Workers, Part, Institute of Comparative Politology, 1992. Vite, O., Temkina, Α., It is April again: After six years, Moskovskije Novosti, 1991, no. 24.

Social Change and Marginality in Today's Russia Michail Chernish

1

Introduction

Contemporary Russia is caught up in a period of profound economic and social change. Little in society remains unaffected by the ongoing transformation. In an odd parlance of Russian polity, the change assumes specifically economic overtones by being characterized as "entry into the market". In a way the economic phraseology used by Russian politicians throws light on their mentality, which has hitherto invariably remained attached to vulgarized Marxism. Within this frame of mind economy is the main thing. Society and other spheres of life must change accordingly, regardless of possible human cost. What is the cost in today's Russia? We may hypothesize that there are four sets of factors which may affect the level of marginality in any modernizing social environment. Firstly, there is the economic development, the rise of new industries, as well as increasing or declining production in the existing industrial sector. Presumably this kind of change creates a need for more qualified workforce — and at the same time displaces a considerable part of the population, many of them losing their jobs, unable to sustain their habitual life style. Secondly, marginality patterns are affected by ownership relations. The accumulation of capital is inevitably conducive to a redistribution of the nation's wealth, with a considerable part of the population sliding down below the poverty line. Thirdly, in a transitional period social tension is on the increase. It results in extreme ideologies gaining ground and ethnic minorities becoming the object of popular prejudice. Fourthly, holistic change is inevitably a disintegrative process. The disintegration arises from the different pace of change in different parts of society. For instance, Russia embarked on change in economy without a developed legal system in conditions of virtually non-existent law enforcement and tax collection. The drive of de-statization, pursued by the early generation of Russian reformers, led to the same as in other post-socialist states. The population, while approving of the reform process in general, is

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unwilling to accept the dismantling of the social protection system. Oddly enough, the privatization process, as part of the general policy of de-statization, contributed to the corruption of bureaucracy and led to the rise of the underworld which through violence and corruption managed to win strong positions in the hierarchy of power. Its influence enhances tendencies towards alienation in society and contributes to popular dissatisfaction with the ideas of democracy. Fifthly, the ongoing crisis puts a question mark over the fledgling democratic institutions. Feeling that their time may be running out, the incumbents of the seats of power seek to strengthen their hold of society, often to the detriment of the weak democratic institutions. Like other post-socialist states, Russia is hovering on the verge of authoritarian rule. But unlike in the countries of the Pacific rim, in Russia this may further exacerbate the problem of marginality and alienation.

2

Factors of Mobility in Contemporary Russia

There are several tendencies in contemporary Russia that are causing marginal groups to grow. In the first place the recent change has had a significant impact on the economy. According to official statistics the economy has continued to decline since 1988. Table 1: 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1992

Gross National Product in Russia in 1986-1992 (%) 103.5 102.5 103.7 101.4 98.4 80.6

The liberalization of prices and the reduction of state subsidies had a significant negative effect upon extraction, heavy industries and the military industrial complex. The highly qualified personnel in these industries began to move out of the state sector and into branches where their skills are valued more and where they can earn a better living. The private sector of the economy, at the same time, began to grow rapidly.

Social Change and Marginality Table 2:

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Percentage of the Population Employed in Various Sectors of the Economy (%)

Year

SUte

Private

1980 1985 1990 1991 1992

90.4 91.1 82.8 75.5 65.4

0.0 0.0 11.9 19.4 29.5

Kolkhoz 6.6 6.0 5.3 5.3 5.3

So far rapid expansion of the private sector has brought no positive changes to the economy. The reason is that most of the newly-born private enterprises remain in trade and finance, acting as go-betweens rather than as producers. The majority of Russian businessmen are wary of investing in industries where the profits are lower and risks higher. It is no coincidence that despite the momentous growth of the private sector, the productivity of labour in Russian industry has recently dropped sharply. Table 3:

The Development of Average Annual Labour Productivity in Russia (%)

Year

Average annual rate of growth

1976-1980 1981-1985 1986-1990 1991

3.3 2.8 1.6 -10.1

Another new development which might have a major impact upon marginality is the virtual collapse or profound crisis of traditional mobility institutions. The Communist Party, which in the past played a role of mobility censor and sponsor, has now fallen into oblivion. As a result about one million party functionaries have had to look for new employment. The system of higher education is also in the grips of an acute crisis. According to recent surveys by the Institute of Sociology, the majority of Russian citizens and particularly young people no longer view higher education as a key to success in life, let alone as a key to material prosperity. Hence the number of students in Russia is constantly falling. Table 4: 1980/1981 1985/1986 1990/1991 1991/1992

Number of College or University Students in Russia per '000 Population 219 206 190 186

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The number of students has declined particularly sharply over the last two years because of the looming employment crisis for graduates with a diploma and the prospect of fast rubles in trade and business. Another factor causing marginal groups to grow has been the increased migration and population exchange between former Soviet republics. However, no exact numbers are available since the registration procedure is overbureaucratized. In the existing circumstances many migrants prefer to solve their problems themselves. Nevertheless enlightened government speculation puts the number of migrants at an estimated two two million. The marginality level today is very much affected by various government policies. Hoping to cushion the effects of the shock therapy, especially for more vocal and politically dangerous groups, the government continues to subsidize ineffective coal and other obsolete industries. Amounting to several thousand billion rubles, such subsidies keep full employment in a fairly ineffective part of the economy and prevent massive unemployment. But the majority becomeLufìmenschen or "people in the air" with no real connection to their present job and with no real future prospects. In other words, mobility patterns in Russia are developing in fairly mitigating circumstances. One of them is the demise of the Soviet Union. Most other countries going through the modernizing stage preserved continuity at least in the sense that they kept their national boundaries and cultural patterns intact. Not so in Russia. Another significant circumstance is weak government, which has to try and reduce tension in society by "pulling the punches" for the main actors on the political scene. Despite harsh statements concerning the state of the budget, the government continues to take a paternalistic stance vis-à-vis parts of the working class, the army, security forces. A mitigating impact on the level of marginality is also exerted by widespread social networking, which boosts the formation of group interests. The latter serve as a buffer which prevents large-scale unemployment in certain social groups such as top managers or management in trade and other distributive institutions. To understand how large-scale marginality is generated, let us take a closer look at occupational mobility patterns in today's Russia. The analysis is based on a survey carried out by the Institute of Sociology in Moscow with a national sample of 1996 respondents. The survey included a large section dedicated to occupational mobility, with a number of questions on change of employment during the last seven years — a period which takes in the years of perestroïka as well as post-perestroika shock therapy in the economy and politics. Comparison of the survey results with data for 1986 showed the following shifts:

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Social Change and Marginality Table 5:

Change in Social Structure 1986-1993 (%)

Manager Qualified specialist Worker Service personnel Entrepreneur Peasant Student Out of work

1986

1993

9.0 19.6 27.5 10.4 0.7 5.9 15.1 10.9

9.0 18.9 26.0 11.0 3.1 5.4 6.0 20.5

Despite momentous social transformations, most Russian citizens succeeded in maintaining their social status. Most managers kept their jobs despite media vilification of totalitarian management and its carriers. The number of qualified specialists has marginally declined, but not beyond the usual rate of decline related to retirement. The same applies to workers, service personnel or peasants. The number of people out of work has increased. In addition to natural turnover through retirement, this tendency is enhanced by rising levels of unemployment, which nevertheless are within reasonable limits (5%). To further monitor the ongoing structural change, let us turn to a log-linear model which outlines the evolution of various social groups during the period mentioned. Log-linear modelling is a fairly new statistical procedure which paves the way for in-depth interpretation of the relationship between nominal categories. It bears close resemblance to traditional regression analysis with just one difference. While regression concentrates on the numerical scale relationship, log-linear models study the odds of the dependent variable. Log-linear modelling is optimal for purposes of studying social mobility patterns in that it brings out clean relationships between variables. Managers. The model clearly shows that during the last eight years the managerial group has retained its traditional pattern of interchange. Table 6:

Fluidity among Managers in 1986-1993 (saturated log model) OBS

Manager Specialist Worker Service personnel Entrepreneur Peasant Student Non-working

120.5 27.5 10.5 2.5 0.5 1.5 7.5 0.5

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The managers maintained sluggish interchange with the group of specialists. This kind of interaction was fairly usual for the Soviet system, which during the post-war years recruited most managers from a fairly educated stratum of society. A special system was maintained which focused on the selection of the "right" (i.e. loyal) people. When chosen, the right person was provided with a special education, often within one of the party-run managerial schools and then promoted to a managerial position. The process of promotion and in-group networking contributed to close associative ties between managers, which make them an ideal lobby. Another factor contributing to the stability of this group is the shortage of qualified managerial skills in contemporary Russian society. The vast majority of Russian managers have never had a free rein, and therefore they find it hard to adapt to the market conditions. The new generation of managers has not yet risen to power. Specialists. As can be clearly seen from Table 7, the specialists have maintained their closure vis-à-vis other social groups. Table 7:

Fluidity among Specialists in 1986-1993 (log model) OBS

Manager Specialist Worker Service personnel Entrepreneur Peasant Student Non-working

21.5 288.5 7.5 4.5 0.5 2.5 49.5 8.5

In the early days of the socialist state the group of specialists tended towards maximum openness. The study of intergenerational mobility reveals that close to 60 per cent of the older generation of professionals come from either peasant or worker families, with the former prevailing. The socialist state made a specific effort to keep the group open. It maintained evening or correspondence schools and introduced privileged positions for those who wanted to climb to a new professional status. However, despite this effort the closure continued. During the Brezhnev period graduates from universities and colleges were often unable to find adequate employment and had to content themselves with worker and technical personnel positions. Prior to the reform there were over five million workers with a higher education in the Soviet Union. Seemingly, the pattern of interaction between professionals and other groups has changed only little after four years of reforms. The group receives an inflow only from the group of students —its natural reserve. There may be several explanations for why the group of specialists in Russia has

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tended to close up against other groups. The closure may be related to the special value system of specialists, emphasizing status at the expense of economic rewards. For a large part of today's professionals this system seems to be the only bond holding them to their former status. Workers. The data reveal only minor changes in the group of workers, too. Like many other groups in contemporary Russian society, blue-collar workers remain in their same niche in society. Table 8:

Fluidity among Workers in 1986-1993 (log model) OBS

Manager Specialist Worker Service personnel Entrepreneur Peasant Student Non-working

6.5 16.5 420.5 10.5 0.5 7.5 58.5 8.5

There is a continuing influx of students into the group of workers mainly from specialized vocational schools. A new tendency consists in the disruption of traditional upward mobility patterns from peasants to workers. Up until the start of the reforms the socialist state looked upon peasants as a pool of resources from which workers could be recruited for the new enterprises. For years the peasant migrants to Russian cities had to come to terms with being second-class citizens. For decades they had no legal permission to live in cities and had to do low-skill, menial work which other city residents did not want to take up. Nevertheless, despite all the problems involved, migration to the big cities was often an escape from the drudgery of village life. Today, it seems both impractical (because of rising urban unemployment) and hard to effect (because of financial constraints). Service personnel. The professional status of service and technical personnel has been little affected by the reform. Non-qualified service personnel exhibit the same fluidity pattern as the previous group: a moderate influx from the student group and an insignificant influx from workers and specialists. Compared with modern societies, Russia is still short of various consumer services. The reform was motivated by the recognition that more services were needed and that greater mobility into the service group should be promoted. However, today there is only little mobility into the service class from either the group of professionals or the worker group. The service sector is only expanding in the domain of the provision for the rich; services for

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middle or low income groups remain unchanged or are even shrinking. High taxes and buying power constraints prevent the service class from expanding. Table 9:

Fluidity among Service Personnel in 1986-1993 (log model) OBS

Manager Specialist Worker Service personnel Entrepreneur Peasant Students Nonworking

6.5 11.5 13.5 156.0 0.5 3.5 26.5 7.5

Entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs form a new and dynamic social group. Table 10: Fluidity among Entrepreneurs in 1986-1993 (log model) OBS Manager Specialist Worker Service personnel Entrepreneur Peasant Student Non-working

10.5 13.5 4.5 3.5 14.5 1.5 15.5 1.5

Three social groups stand out as constituting a major social basis for the entrepreneurial class. Firstly, managers. The movement of managers into the class of owners is a natural phenomenon. In the not too distant past managers were still one of the more influential groups in Russian society. They had direct access to material and other assets and were in charge of the ongoing reform. Today, they are the primary recipients of privatized resources. The second group is that of specialists. Its mobility into the entrepreneurial class is a result of greater pressure being applied on them by the state. Recently state institutions have discontinued their subsidies to various hi-tech research and development projects. This decision has greatly reduced the level of intellectual activity in Russia. Many disadvantaged former scientists, engineers or teachers have moved to the private sector, starting up their own businesses. The tendency is exemplified by the rapid depletion of the scientific community, which over the last two years has lost over half a million people to various private enterprises.

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The third important source for the entrepreneurial class is represented by students. Studies have shown that young people are more flexible and can more readily bear the shock of the reform. There is a substantial number of students who upon graduation are moving straight into business and achieveing a degree of success in the new economy. The research evidence shows that while social differentiation widens social cleavages throughout society, it works even faster among young people. Peasants. One of the more immobile groups in society is that of peasants. Table 11: Fluidity among Peasants in 1986-1993 (log model) OBS Manager Specialist Worker Service personnel Entrepreneur Peasant Student Non-working

0.5 1.5 8.5 1.5 0.5 88.5 5.5 2.5

There is a slight tendency of upward mobility from the peasant group into the urban worker group. All other links are insignificant. Obviously, in the present conditions, a peasant status is very much a dead end position. On the one hand, peasants are prevented from moving into cities by the lack of housing. Unlike in the past, urban apartments are now sold rather than distributed, and prices on the congested housing market are way beyond the reach of most people. On the other hand, migration into cities is not feasible today because of the continuing depression in urban industries and the high level of unemployment. Non -workingpopulation. A group which shows more mobility than others is the non-working population. Table 12: Fluidity among the Non-Working Population in 1986-1993 OBS Manager Specialist Worker Service personnel Entrepreneur Peasant Student Non-working

15.5 37.5 87.5 33.5 1.5 16.5 29.5 194.5

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The most noticeable trend in the given data set is a disproportionate influx into the categories of specialists and students. Both trends underline the growth of unemployment, which is putting most pressure on the educated class. We have to accept the fact that survey data do not provide an exhaustive account of the growth of unemployment. In many cases enterprises will try to adapt by slowing down their production and paying their workforce the absolute minimum. This is a protected form of unemployment which allows the majority of both blue- and white-collar workers to claim their former status. Summing up, we may conclude that the attempts at reform in Russia have so far had no significant impact on the structure of employment. Most social groups have been unaffected both numerically and structurally. The process of social groups closure continues despite the reform. It seems that the changes so far have not been conducive to a structural transformation of the economy. All tendencies in the social structure point at a widening gap between Russia and modern societies in terms of the fluidity of the social structure. Against this backdrop of obvious stagnation in the occupational structure, the redistribution of wealth is in full swing. According to the same study 26.5 per cent of Russian citizens say they are worse off this year than the previous year. Only 0.8 per cent feel their standard of living has risen. 38.6 per cent claim that they are not eating as well as they used to, 66.1 per cent say they have less clothes, and 52 per cent believe their opportunities to rest have deteriorated. Approached from a different angle, we may say that the life chances of the majority of Russian people have narrowed down. With industries at a standstill and almost ten million unemployed, how do the people survive? Firstly, they moonlight. Almost 25 per cent of those taking part said they had a second job which accounted for the biggest part of their income. These second jobs are typically in the private sector or in services. Secondly, people till their land plots. In the past a significant part of the Russian population received personal land plots (32 %). If we add to this the number of Russians who have relatives (24 %) in rural villages, we are looking at a very significant part of the population. Today these plots are used for subsistence purposes. Thirdly, selling and reselling is widespread; and in some cases it is a relatively profitable pastime. In the category of Russian entrepreneurs at least half are people who earn their living by reselling imported or local products. Fourthly, some Russians engage in criminal or quasi-criminal activities. Racket and violence are widespread. In other words, the population survives by spontaneously creating several parallel redistribution and power systems. The polymorphic nature of the social structure provides an impetus to marginality. It creates several worlds, none of which is real and lasting. The greatest problem of reform seems to lie

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in the acute conflict between political and economic change. The former embodies what can be called an attempt at social integration on the basis of open political discussion, the latter an attempt at social integration based on system integration, its economic survival. Raimo Blom and his colleagues (see their contribution in this volume) are justified in attributing this conflict to inadequate knowledge of the ongoing change and separation of the market reform from the reform in other areas. However, in our view the present crisis in Russia can be explained by the incompatibility of redistribution in its present form and parallel attempts to establish a liberal political system. What lies ahead is probably a consolidation of state power, which will find expression in stronger authoritarian practices.

The Emergence of Civil Society in Estonia

1987-1994 Rein Ruutsoo

1

Introduction

The ongoing processes of transition in Estonia have mainly been described in terms of a transition to market economy or as a change in the political regime, by reference to emerging democratic institutions and the nation-state. However, significant changes are also under way in the socio-cultural d o main. The process of socio-cultural modernization involves all constitutive elements of society and produces a rather significant redefinition of the relationship between regime and society from mutual hostility and alienation to recognition and cooperation. This change can best be described in terms of civil society and political culture. Concepts referring to the social essence of the problems involved open up a useful perspective for an analysis of how Estonian society is facing fragmentation, confusion, alienation, rumours, etc. — the main characteristics of post-communist society. Even though progress has been made in the domains of economy and legislation, there is clear and more sophisticated Leninist and non-Leninist "inheritance" to meet in the formation of modern polity, regime and society with an ethos and structure predicated on a complementary relationship between public and private realms, on the v i ability of impersonal rules and norms, and on egalitarianism expressed in the role of effective participant (Jowitt 1992). This article is chiefly concerned with the layer of civil society that supports, regulates and shapes the capacity of ordinary people to join associations, movements, parties, communal self-government structures or otherwise to create a public sphere capable of shaping social and political decisions based on rational critical discourse. As Graig Calhoun (1994) puts it in his illuminating article, civil society "must include an institutionally organised and substantial capacity for people to enter as citizens into public discourse about the nature and course of their life together. This capacity depends not just on formal institutions, but on civil society as a realm of sociability". More

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specifically, we will study these structures of civil society that Shils (1991) has called its "primary structures", that is, the mass media, ethic minorities and political parties.

2

The Widening of Public Space — The Emergence of the Fourth Estate

The mass media was the first and most successfully revived structure of civil society in all post-communist countries (Ingram 1993). This is also true of the Baltic countries and Estonia in particular, even though the starting points of the transition were quite different. In Estonia the structure of opportunity opened by perestroïka came in two stages: the first was the arrival of glasnost and the second was the institution of competitive elections. After liberalization of the regime all the main political powers in Estonia (excepting the pro-imperial "International movement") accepted that democratic institutions of the modern state depend on an intact public opinion, because that is still the only accepted basis for legitimate political domination. The successful emergence of the fourth estate requires two kinds of progress. First, the removal of censorship and the de-etatization of the right to launch publications. Secondly, it can only be effective with the emergence of a representative and rational public sphere. If the first is mainly a problem of political progress, the democratization of the regime, then the latter is very much part of the social and cultural development (privatization of the media, formation of parties, professionalism of journalists, etc.) of polity. Both tasks also represent qualitatively different stages in the formation of Estonian society: the emergence of "citizens' society" and transition to modern parliamentarian polity.

3

"Movement Society" and "Mass Opinion" Formation

The emergence of "movement society" in 1 9 8 7 - 1 9 9 0 and the growth of mass media as a vital network for the nation's mental energy was largely an outcome of the liberalization of censorship. It was originally facilitated by an attempt to restructure totalitarianism — the glasnost politics of Gorbachev. However, the long-term opposition to the Soviet system and to Soviet occupation in Estonia soon generated a need to restore genuine freedom of expression. B y the beginning of 1987, Estonia had reached the first stage in

The Emergence of Civil Society in Estonia

99

the formation of a new public sphere. From February 1987 on it became possible to broadcast live weekly programmes where Estonian intellectuals spoke openly about issues; in the winter open debates also started on television. In autumn 1987 when public discussion on the IME programme was opened, the Estonian mass media got off to a good start in their effort to mobilize the people. The plan to set up the Popular Front in Estonia was announced during a live TV talk show on April 13,1988. In winter and spring the Estonian communist nomenclature opposing glasnost changed tactics. The Central Committee and the KGB launched a massive propaganda campaign against dissidents and recruited scholars to discredit the IME concept, but without success. Political control over the mass media was now delegated to the editors (i.e. to the cadres). However, this soon proved to be ineffective as the requirement of having the Party nominate editors was ignored. According to the official position of the Estonian Communist Party's new leadership in 1989 there were no "forbidden items" that could not be made public; only "extremist positions" would not be accepted (Väljas 1989). But there are missing demonstrative attempts to censure the media. In Estonia the Communist Party did not make use of the absence of legal bases for glasnost. The relativization of the position of the Communist Party as the monopoly of truth was finalized in October 1990 with the complete removal of censorship. In fact this institution ceased most operations as early as 1989, having already declared major limitations in its field of interests in autumn 1989 (Vikerkaar 1989). According to some estimates published in autumn 1989, the public sphere was 80 per cent open. In October 1990, Estonian editor of "Voice of America" limar Kiilvet acknowledged that it makes no sense to broadcast news over the radio because Estonian newspapers give adequate coverage of world issues as it is (Visnap 1991). In 1989-1990 radio stations financed by the US and playing an important role in the mobilization of the first rallies lost much of their opposition-building weight. By 1990 the formation of the public sphere was complete in sense that genuine state-socialist opposition between the private and official sphere ended completely. The de-etatization of the right to launch publications yielded its first dividends in late 1987 when the first cooperative publishing houses were founded and newspapers launched. However, this was still in part a semi-legal activily. At the beginning of 1988 the KGB attempted to restrict the distribution of radical leaflets, but in doing so appeared more comical and out of place than anything else. By summer 1988 unauthorized publications were already being sold quite openly. Copyright licences for periodicals issued by the Ministry of Culture since 1990 include only standard registration. In January 1990 it was declared that the Estonian National Broadcasting system was wholly independent from Moscow (ENSV 1990). The first legal

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acts to restrict party control over broadcasting and instituting semi-parliamentarian control entered into force in February 1990. It was declared that broadcasting was now working for the promotion of political pluralism (ENSV 1990). In spring 1990 Savisaar's first non-communist government subordinated all broadcasting activities to a parliamentary commission. The new statutes of the Estonian Radio and T V , with the Popular Front dominating the Supreme Council, thus laid the foundations for European-style broadcasting (Sookruus 1994). During the period between 1987 and 1993 the continuing process of mass media liberalization has brought Estonia closer to the standards of modern society in terms of diversity, specialization and professionalism. No less than 5 0 0 new periodicals have appeared since 1987, when the figure was 217 — although not all have survived. Newspaper and magazine circulations in Estonia were highest during the years of the Singing Revolution. In 1990, a total of 2,400 newspapers per 1,000 population were printed in Estonia, while the figure for Lithuania was 1,550 and for Latvia somewhere between the two. After the deepening of the economic crisis in 1990, the circulation of periodicals, including national dailies, has sharply decreased, but the 160 copies per 1000 inhabitants in Estonia was still highest in the Baltic states; in Latvia this figure was 107 and in Lithuania 114 (see Hoyer, Lauk, Vihalemm 1993). Moscow retained control over most of the Estonian printing industry up until the country regained independence, but Estonia was happy to escape the Soviet paratroopers' crackdown that followed in Riga and Vilnius which inflicted serious damage as far as the establishing of independent media was concerned. The media played a very dramatic role in the formation of relationships between the emerging Estonian state and the non-Estonian part of society. The crushing of the Party state revealed how highly fragmented and alienated Estonian society had been. The differences between the Estonian and R u s sophone media deepened dramatically in 1989, and they rarely joined in dialogue. The media were indeed instrumental in the creation of two sharply opposed national camps, which was essentially the result of the politics of Moscow authorities and further aggravated by the politics to replace the party-state, not a liberal nation-state but an Estonian ethno-state.

3.1

Towards the Formation o f " P u b l i c O p i n i o n "

The regaining of national independence has had important long-term implications with regard to the formation of the public sphere in Estonia. The first fundamental changes in the field of mass communication began to appear towards the end of the 1980s. The public opinion that grew up out of the

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communication community (a "national village" analogous to the " m o v e ment society") that emerged in the early 1990s has now been exhausted and has become partly decomposed into the informal opinions of private intellectuals and become concentrated into formal opinion's rhetorically effective institutions. The only positive alternative to new, revolutionary "sacral publicity" was a procedural type of publicity, which, "independently of the organizations by which the opinion of the people is mobilised and integrated, (...) scarcely plays a politically relevant role any longer in the process of opinion and consensus formation in a mass democracy" (Habermas 1991). So progress in the formation of modern public opinion was deeply dependent on the formation of "mouthpieces of public opinion", a politically and legally constituted society. The main tasks in the second phase of print media transition to market economy were twofold: to make mass media a commercially viable business and the "formation of a party press". A s regards the task of creating a new, independent "party press", the print media in Estonia managed to break loose quite quickly from the control of the Communist Party; therefore oppositional journalism stemming from the popular movements was slow to emerge. The efforts of the former dissidents did not play a significant role in the reshaping of the audience. Only some parties (notably the Estonian National Independent Party and the Centre Party) have attempted to launch their own weeklies, but with no success. In a small country such as Estonia, a politically engaged party press appears to have very poor prospects of survival. The "quasi party press" launched by "opinion groups" rapidly disappeared from the scene. The profit motive has now become an important component of press freedom. T o make a profit, papers need to have a sufficiently large audience. The poor performance and low status of political parties makes it difficult for any party to identify itself with certain parties. This explains why the media have had only partial success in creating ideological identities as political institutions. The dynamics of the transition has created new tensions in the emerging public sphere. On the one hand a modern public sphere was urgently needed in Estonia to help in the exercise of social power and political domination, which is effectively subjected to the mandate of democratic publicity. But an effective national reformist policy has also created an instrumental need for dependable (manipulated) channels of information and persuasion to reach the polity. The inherent conflict of transition society between its effectiveness and legitimacy points at the phenomenon of "reform dictatorship". The conflict between the tendency of "media mobilization" and press freedom has evolved through a number of stages.

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No longer required to support the national independence struggle and gaining increasing self-confidence, the press soon took on the role of the "fourth estate" in relation to the "charismatic" state power now dominated by the Popular Front. In 1990 the latter "lost its influence or control over the media. One of the reasons why the Popular Front lost its popularity was its authoritarian style of speaking to the public". Indeed according to some analysts it was the press who overthrew the Savisaar government (Hoyer, Lauk, Vihalemm 1993). The next stage in the conflict corresponds to the phenomenon identified e.g. by Jürgen Habermas and Claus Offe where the capitalist state is caught between two imperatives — the imperative of legitimation (democracy) and the imperative of accumulation (liberalism). This fundamental conflict was deepened in Estonia by the openly Thatcherist policy of the first post-Soviet government. Trying to suppress the criticism, Prime Minister Mart Laar was forced to accuse the Estonian press of disloyalty to reforms even on the international arena. The need to mobilize the press behind the process of transition goes a long way to explaining the reluctance of those in power to give up their control over the media. The coalition agreement made by Laar's right-of-centre government in September 1992 included the provision to privatize the media and to bring the electronic press under the control of Parliament. Despite the democratic rhetoric, tensions deepened between the media and the government they had helped to power. In spring 1994 the government expressed its strong desire to subject the media to itself rather than to Parliament (despite the coalition agreement). The government coalition tried to introduce ideological control over the media by placing its own propaganda leaders at the top of media management (Veidemann 1994). A major international scandal was caused in spring 1994 by the attempts of the Estonian government to impose Soviet-style political control on independent newspapers still owned by the state (Kadastik 1994). Together with these attempts at political control the tendency towards the creation of corporative structures was particularly dangerous: business circles close to the Laar government tried seriously to privatize the country's biggest daily. Given the failure of politicians to reach a consensus of opinion even on the need for new legislation, the mass media in Estonia have so far been c o m pletely free of any regulation. However in May 1994 the Estonian Parliament passed a new Law on National Radio and T V Broadcasting (Ringhäälinguseadus: Art. 680). As far as civil society and culture is concerned it is important to underline that in legislation no concessions were made to business circles and that a decision was made in favour of public radio and television, thus emphasizing their national, cultural, integrative and information function. The decision was largely modelled on the example of Finland.

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The launching of private radio stations put an end to the monopoly situation in radio broadcasting and helped to alleviate tensions. The country's first private-owned radio station was launched on February 26, 1992. By the winter of 1993 there were over a dozen local commercial radios in Estonia, which in per capita terms is the same as in Finland. It is expected that the number of private radio stations will continue rapidly to increase as no business plans are required of applicants for broadcasting licences (Lään 1993). Considering the small size of the country and its relative poverty, c o m mercial TV stations have also made quite an impressive start. No less than three companies are engaged in the business, and the volume of their supply through the former Russian channels now outstrips the production of the state-owned channel. Some of the biggest towns such as Tartu, Narva and Pärnu have also started broadcasting local TV programmes. The privatization of the most influential dailies in Estonia has, by contrast, got off to a very slow and delayed start. The decree issued by Edgar Savisaar's government on November 28, 1991, "On the privatization of the press and managing Estonian Television and Radio", which gave preference of privatization to the journalists themselves, met with a critical response from both the Journalists' Union and Estonian TV and Radio (Luik 1993). The criticism focused on the "socialist" tendencies of the legislation as well as on the requirements of commercialization and education. "Postimees" was privatized in 1991, "Molodjozh Estonii" in 1992, and "Rahva Hääl" finally in 1994. According to some Estonian analysts the privatization of the press lags far behind the progress in other Eastern and Central European countries — in fact by some three of four years (Kadastik 1994). Marju Lauristin (1994) has argued that there exists no media politics to mention in Estonia. After debates on several drafts, it was agreed that there was no need for a special media law: any problems in the media could be regulated, as in the Anglo-American legal system, on the basis of information and libel law. The many court trials aimed at defending the honour and human dignity of individuals confirm that the principles of a law-based state are indeed becoming effective in Estonia. The conflicts between the state authority and the public have proved the strength of more general democratic traditions. The media have been saved from any brutal attacks. According to the evaluation of the Washington-based Freedom Forum in spring 1994, Estonia together with Latvia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland belongs to those 68 countries (out of a total of 186) where the press is free of the political control of the state (Rahva Hääl, May 4, 1994). Despite the economic hardships, the press is gaining strength and has become a recognized branch of the economy with a turnover of hundreds of millions of Estonian crowns (Ohtuleht, May 4, 1994).

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At the same time as the mass media are taking up an increasingly important role in creating "public space" for rational dialogue on issues concerning social development across societies with long parliamentarian traditions, in Estonia that role is only just beginning to take shape. Therefore the attempts to impose control over the media can hardly be explained away simply by reference to the "traces of Soviet-era inertia". Or as Marju Lauristin and Peeter Vihalemm predict: " T h e media work is greatly impeded by weakness of social analyses and generalisation. Neither politicians nor journalists fully understand how a normal society functions, what roles are played by different institutions and strata in society. Nor is there any clarity about the mission of the media and its role as the so-called 'fourth estate' /.../. The present situation in Estonia as well as the other post-totalitarian countries, can be described as an expression of societies' intellectual immaturity. National consciousness has not yet assumed the form of democratic self-consciousness" (Hoyer, Lauk, Vihalemm 1 9 9 3 : 2 7 4 - 2 7 5 ) . Sometimes things are even worse because it is easy for "rumor as a mode of political discussion, what works against sober public rational discussion of issues", to strike root in the p o s t - c o m munist mental climate. The Estonian government has also failed to fulfill the promises it made in the coalition agreement to provide adequate information to the Russianspeaking community in Estonia ( " T h e Russian-speaking population must be sufficiently informed of events and conditions in Estonia and abroad"). Large parts of that community are therefore tuning in to Russian broadcasts and reading the Russian press, which for the main part are not tolerant towards the Estonian Republic. The language barrier also prevents the formation of a common field of communication loyal to the Republic of Estonia. Less than 2 0 per cent of the Russians have even a basic command of the Estonian language (Kirch 1992), but the share of Russian-language programmes on Estonian T V is still insignificant at about 5 per cent of air time. The per capita number of Russian-language periodicals with a circulation in excess of 2,000 copies is 2 - 3 times smaller than the number of similar Estonian-language publications (Veskimägi 1992). Only 12 per cent of the Russian-speaking population watched Estonian T V in 1992, while the figure for Estonians was 85 per cent. At the same time 73 per cent of Russian-speakers watched Russian T V . This situation is clearly creating an information and cultural vacuum in the Russophone community in Estonia. The limited capacity of the mass media to fill the role of the fourth estate implies a low political culture. The diagnosis of "communicational atrophy" must be closely related to limited civil society, an ineffectively and sometimes very poorly institutionalized citizen-role. "Public opinion" as a distinct quality of social consciousness can only be formed by established social subjects, parties, minority groups who are

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allowed to maintain their identity and established elites with a firm position in social space. The scarcity of so-called quality papers, the weakness of investigative journalism, the fragmentation of discursive public space will probably not become a major problem in the more general process of democratization in Estonia, as the other mechanisms promoting and protecting democracy seem to be sufficiently strong. However, the discontinuation of dialogue with an already marginalized, one-dimensional and over-politicized, mostly Slavic community can be potentially explosive.

4

Party Formation and the Development of Civil Society

In Estonia the formation and legitimacy of political parties, civil society and political public space has so far attracted much less attention than the formal and often distorted characteristics of the political parties. To date, more than 25 groups striving to become political parties have been registered in Estonia. However, their total membership numbers no more than between 2,000 and 10,000. Concerned about their legitimacy, the ideologists of the parties currently in power argue that the party structure is better developed in Estonia than in Central and Eastern Europe. However, comparative studies show that the situation is in fact the other way round (Rosimannus 1994). The discussion that follows concentrates on the shaping of political society, political culture, and procedural patterns for legitimation of power, i.e. civil patterns of new political ontology. Parties have a crucial task in organizing, mobilizing and socializing citizens, in internalizing democracy at the grassroots level. The focus here is on the politics of linkage and the role of the parties in building society. Although it makes sense to make a distinction between "civil society" and "political society", i.e. parties, political organizations and political public (Arato 1991), in the present context that distinction is not relevant. The distinctive feature of Leninist-Brezhnevist polity was the Party's denial of the state having an independent political structure. Among the main preconditions for the emergence of a civil social network (transition to democracy) are the emancipation or creation of state political autonomy, the institution of the rule of law and the emergence of an independent political civil society. These tasks are closely interwoven with each other, although their realization occurs in distinct phases of the formation of political civil society. This process includes (1) a quasi-charismatic, (2) an ideological, and (3) a pragmatic stage of the formation of political society.

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An important part of the organizational syndrome of Leninism was political organization based on "charismatic impersonalism". Charismatic political organization rests on the historical role of the working class or party cadres. This kind of political organization is the direct antithesis to modern society, where the dominant institutions are procedural, the dominant actor is the individual and the dominant ethos is empirical. Progress in the transition process includes both legal prerequisites and the promotion of political culture. There is a close correspondence between these preconditions. The "quasi-charismatic" phase in 1 9 8 7 - 1 9 8 9 was very much initiated by the Soviet Communist Party's "inclusive tactics", which relativized the charismatic leading position of the party. The limits of this position became obvious in the Draft Action Programme of the Communist Party of Estonia of September 10, 1989, which stated as follows: " T h e position of the CPE in our society is determined primarily by its fruitful political activities to promote social progress and by its ability to rally various social groups and political forces into a majority which supports the strategic goals of the CPE, rather than the privilege of appearing as the monopoly representative for all interests guaranteed by the constitution." (Furtado, Chandler 1992) The Gorbachevian type of quasi-charismatic regime relinquished its main (Leninist) character-defining features: it dropped the persecution of dissidents, released the last dissidents from prison, reformed the K G B , etc. In 1 9 8 8 - 1 9 8 9 several laws were passed which legalized more or less authentic self-organization by the people. But they all missed the chance to question the political status of the Communist Party. June 30, 1987 marked the adoption of the " U S S R Law on State Enterprise (Associations)", which also aimed at renewing the role of the traditional Soviet Leninist institution — the "working collective". Last came the semi-autarkic institution. The dominant corporate autarkic political entity, the Party, hierarchically connected a set of these socio-economic entities. A visible change in the formation of the legal environment supporting civil society took place during the first half of 1989 with the adoption of the "Law on Profit Associations" and the "Law on Citizens' (Non-Profit) Associations". The latter was the first legal instrument to regulate the declared right to form associations, which were divided into public organizations/associations and popular movements (these having the status of legal persons). The law did not affect the activities of all-union associations. The by-law issued by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet on March 14, 1990, "On Amendments to the 'Law on Citizens (Non-Profit) Associations'" displayed a Soviet-type hierarchy of associations, including citizens' associations, public organizations, and socio-political organizations, each type corresponding to the level of administrative structures in Estonia. The law did

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not have the capacity to regulate the activities of nationwide (Soviet Union) associations. Socio-political organizations were equated with parties "under formation", but no specific regulations were passed concerning political party formation. All organizations/associations had to be registered by the local self-governmental institution (Soviet), the Council of Ministers or the Supreme Council. Refusal to register could not be disputed in the court, but the final decisive instance was the Soviet itself. It is quite clear that there was still a long way to go to the law-governed state displaying a division of powers. The "Law of ESSR on Trade Unions" was adopted in December 1989. It declared that trade unions shall be completely independent of any political party and the state. All these innovations which promoted the development of a new legal environment were in close correspondence with Gorbachev's idea to mobilize a "controlled initiative" in order to save the regime. Gorbachev believed that the relativization of the Party's power would allow a vital Soviet polity to emerge in which the Party's power and legitimacy is secure. The "monopoly of power", but not yet the "leading position" of the Communist Party was questioned after the launch by the Popular Front in April (constituted itself in October 1988) and its innovation of a new political culture: a new rational political discourse. In November 1988, with the amendments to the constitution, movements were legally included into the political system of power (a typical move for Gorbachev's tactics of inclusion). The Popular Front was gaining massive support, but it did not accept the traditional "leading role" of the Communist Party in its basic documents. "The Estonian National Independence Party and groups solidarizing with it do not consider the existing state legal. It follows that they are not accepted as part of our political system and are not legalized as political organizations" (Väljas 1989). The "essence" of the paradigmatic political conflict promoted by the Popular Front was totally misunderstood by the Party. The Popular Front was more than a simple oppositional group or an ideological threat to Party power. It offered an oppositional definition of political leadership and membership, confronted the Party cadre with the national citizen. Formally, the conception of "national citizenship" was maintained by the Committees of Citizens, but in the new political environment this historically legal institution acquired some really charismatic features. Old truths were contrasted with new ones. The dominating movements, i.e. the Popular Front and Estonian Committee proposed visions of the future that came close to pretension to the monopoly of truth. The role of certain leaders with authoritarian personal affiliations was particularly significant.

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In Estonia, as in the rest of Eastern Europe, this period saw charismatic efflorescence of public ethics: demands for and expressions of individual dignity as the " b a s e " , not the superstructure, of political life. Ethics was perceived as an autonomous political criterion for public action. New ethics was contrasted with the "Empire of E v i l " of the Soviets (Jowitt 1992: 292). In this sense the "movement society" that emerged during the Singing Revolution was quite far removed from the "procedural impersonality" of liberal societies. After the relativization of the role of the party, it was much more problematic in Estonia to legitimize Soviet power than was the case in Russia. The premise behind Gorbachev's attempted political relativization of the Party position was the presumed existence of latent, but real Soviet citizenry. The presence of countervailing to national consciousness civic Soviet identification was an illusion of the Soviet top-bureaucrat. National emancipation happened to be an unavoidable element of the democratization of the Empire. Democratization in Estonia had to follow another logic formation of national community and drive for national independence that accelerated the whole process. After announcing in November 1989 the Russian/Soviet takeover and declaring the 1940 annexation illegal, the "Soviet Estonian state" exhausted itself. So the following urgent need to redefine the weakening position of the Communist Party (de-charismatizing the Party) in Estonia cannot be e x plained by Gorbachev's reforms or the latent democratic identity of the Estonian Communist Party. Its by now Estonian-dominated leadership viewed the situation as an emergency. To save itself (not its power), the leadership of the Party had to distance itself from the Russian regime. In September 1988 the leadership of the Party had been in favour of " a historically motivated one-party system", and it had described the strengthening of the communists' positions as a fulfilment of "democracy and political pluralism" (Valjas 1989). De-etatization of the Party in 1989 was the only chance of legitimizing its existence. The need for such moves was stimulated particularly by the upcoming elections in autumn 1989 and March 1990. In order to be competitive, it had to present itself as a more or less democratic grouping. But a split in the Estonian Communist Party could not be avoided. The Estonian Communist Party began formally to take distance from the state. On January 20, the Central Committee of the Estonian Communist Party and Government announced it would "discontinue the issuing of common resolutions on economic and social questions of the Republic" by January 3 0 , 1 9 9 0 . On February 2 3 , 1 9 9 0 , the main legal grounds for the political power monopoly of the Estonian Communist Party were buried. Articles 6 and 7 of the Constitution were redefined to allow the existence within the political

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system of many political parties. However, they were declared to perceive the legal parts of the "political system" only under condition that they accept the Constitution and the laws of Soviet Estonia. The ideological phase in civil organization (party formation) refers to the period where the Communist Party lost its monopoly of historical-political insight, whose incarnation any time was in the "correct line". This period signals intensified efforts to apply modern ideologies in Estonia. The peak in the formation of quasi-party opinion groups came around 1989-1990 when the "society of movements" (primarily the Popular Front) had created both a new "public space" and promoted new leaders. The "Election Platform of the Popular Front of Estonia" (20 October 1989) indicated that Estonia "is standing on the edge of the multi-party system" (Furtado, Chandler 1992). The new Supreme Council, elected in March 1990 and dominated by the Popular Front which had won the election, legalized all these groups that had been banned by the Communist Party to open up the debate on the future of Estonia open. The ideological phase emerging in the formation of political formation signalled that new leaders and groups of intellectuals looking for an identity and trying to indicate their position in the fragmented political context/environment felt some need for more articulated "programmes". Compared with many other post-communist countries (even Lithuania), the situation in Estonia was complicated by combining future projects with such traditional ideologies as "liberalism", "Christianity", "socialism" or "nationalism". None of these, not even nationalism in its aggressive forms (e.g. antisemitism) has had widespread support in Estonia. Both socialism and Christianity have historically been unpopular in the country as the ideologies propagated by the dominant oppressive groups (cf. Herrenkirche and state-socialism) and have a low potential of popular mobilization. The division of political society into "right-wingers" and "left-wingers" has many charismaticor sacral features. A "right-wing" political orientation is against any logic closely tied up with ethnocentrism, and the choice of "right-wing" politics is motivated by the strong negative identification with the state-socialist past ("There is no alternative to market economy"). The ideological-dogmatic phase of emancipation from communist intellectual dictatorship is closely linked up with corporativist groupings. The Estonian dissident oppositional public space cannot be compared to Poland or Czechoslovakia (it is estimated that up to 30,000 activists have been active in Poland). Therefore, political groupings grew up out of a very narrow substratum of circles of friends, student corporations or groups of dissidents with their specific mentality. Most of the new parties mushroomed from the ground (having lost their historical roots) and many of them were close to the Leninist understanding of the party as an organization united by definite

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charismatic ideology. The inherited context of political culture also cleared ground for corporative tendencies (in some parties one could only become a member on the recommendation of an "old timer" and those who breached party discipline were expelled). This helps to explain the rather weak position of political parties among the other structures of civil society. The formation of such politically articulated opinion groups was not perhaps conducive to the development of new political culture, but it certainly was conducive to establishing new kinds of institutions. The pragmatic phase in the formation of political society closely corresponds to the mobilization of "sectoral interest groups" in 1 9 9 2 - 1 9 9 4 . From the point of the historic and genetic development of civil society, political parties are secondary by nature. They rely on the primary structures of social communication and interests, which are the economic structures of civil society on the one hand and the "public sphere" (in Habermas's sense), on the other. In the West, researchers have found that the formation of "economic civil society" is determined by the prior existence of such organizational ties. Neither of these organic historical substructures of the party-political civil society could develop in Estonia before 1988. In this sense the pragmatically motivated emergence of Estonian proto-parties is quite different from the processes in Eastern and Central Europe. The socio-economic space for civil initiative in Estonia was much narrower than for example in Hungary or Poland with their developed "secondary economy". Only large-scale privatization, the development of market relations and capital accumulation have in the last couple of years created a new "orientation space" and horizon of expectations for people to recognize their economic, political and social interests and consolidation on this basis. But this means an accelerated formation of interest groups set up on a completely different basis than the current ideological or even charismatic political parties (like "Pro Patria"), such as the Union of Legal Owners, the Union of Pensioners, the Union of Tenants, League of Taxpayers, etc. In this context it is very symptomatic that the authentic trade unions movement has not played any significant role in political dialogue. Fears have been raised that domination in political life could cause of mushrooming of a new type of "pre-political" associations. This kind of segmentary mobilization is a contradictory process. First, there is an urgent need for civic initiative and for the "colonization" of public space. For the emergent special-interest groups attempting to achieve independent representation, the level of cohesion and solidarity in their own ranks has proved the most critical resource at this level of civil society constitution. But at the same time the turn to a heavily segmented polity, to a system of institutionalized, not "strategically" (in Habermas's sense) thinking political group

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interest competition, is certainly not the best way to deal with some divisions within civil society in a non-explosive way. The point is that this type of institution looks very much to lack built-in parliamentarian-oriented socializing potential for its participants. Sectional proto-parties representing distinct socio-economic clienteles rather than parties proper are grouping around the ideological issues and questions linked to regime-building. The other disadvantage of dominating sectoral initiatives in political s o ciety is the great risk of implanting corporative structures. The search for privileges or initiating corporatist tendencies (to some group) refers to the obstacles that obstruct the development of a political culture based on overt, public, cooperative and rule-based relationships. Instead, it reinforces the traditional community and regime political cultures, with their accent on a covert, personalized, hierarchic relationship involving complicity rather than public agreements. The restitution of the Independent Estonian Republic in August 1991 means that development of political society will take place within the institutional structure of a democratic regime and legal environment. The status of parties in the country's political system was defined for the first time by the Estonian Constitution that was adopted in summer 1992. The modern political society in which the dominant institutions are procedural, in which the dominant actor is the individual and in which the dominant ethos is empirical, has not got off to a very good start. According to the 1993 rules regulating party activities in Estonia, the main requirements were the existence of ground rules and a membership of at least 200 people. In May 1994 a new Law on Political Parties, modelled largely on the examples of Finland and Germany, was adopted in replacement of the 1993 law. At the same time, new legislation governing election to Parliament was also adopted. This was mainly inspired by the alarming situation in political society formation. The Law on Parties increases the required minimum membership to 1000. The Law on State Assembly Elections increases the election threshold to 10 per cent and allows only political parties to take part in parliamentary elections. The aim of the law is to speed up the formation of parties with legal restrictions. For the first time, control is introduced over the financing of the parties to block corruption, prevent the formation of corporative structures, and provide financial support by the state. At the same time it seems that the parties have put up their defences and restricted the openness of society for the sake of formal party formation, and the actual ability of civil society to influence policy-making through democratic means. The state initiatives were unable to help the weak political culture or to neutralize the dramatic Baltic political environment. The parties in Europe are social and historical and in many respects cultural phenomena. The question remains therefore whether the classical party structure will be

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restored at all in countries like Estonia where democratic political traditions have been broken. The integration of Estonia into Europe has helped the revival of political parties both through direct sponsoring and examples. However, a new civilization with a postmodern political culture and novel types of organization has emerged in Europe where an important role is played by the "new movements" and the "new type of citizen". Weak civil patterns of political society display passivity, low popular engagement in decision-making and a weak belief in the possibility to exercise influence through participation. According to sociological studies there are very few people in Estonia who trust political parties, and the level of trust is considerably lower than that expressed in trade unions and local governments (Rose, Maley 1994). Civil participation and the regime legitimizing power of parties looks limited. The level of political efficacy is also quite low. On average, about 15 per cent of Estonian adults believe they can have an impact on political processes within the country (Kivirähk, Rosimannus, Pajumaa 1993). There has been a dramatic decline in the most active forms of participation typical of "movement society" (demonstrations, marches, pickets), and this has not been compensated with increased procedural participation. On the contrary. The traditional charismatic mechanisms in relation to power will continue to surface as long as the existential problems of the nation remain unsolved. As Aksel Kirch (1992: 33) puts it: "Although public opinion polls in Estonia have shown rather critical popular attitude towards the current Government, a more profound analysis of Estonian respondents' answers reveals quite an opposite situation. In general Estonians perceive a sense of harmony and consensus between the nation and government. Therefore people feel unconscious solidarity with the concept of building a nation-state". It is natural that in a charismatic mental environment with alienated structures there will emerge populist protest movements by way of "criticism". The fact that there is sufficient ground for such movements was demonstrated by the congress of the Union of Estonian Patriots where the interests of the "black shirts" and money of some segmentarians were publicly united for the first time. The former Popular Front leaders have predicted a new phase of street politics. It can be summarized that the level of formal civil institutionalization is not critical for qualifying political civil society in Estonia. If to define the regime political culture referred to the set of informal adaptive (behavioural and attitudinal) as "postures that emerge in response to the institutional definition of social, economic and political life" (Jowitt 1 9 9 2 : 5 6 ) , it must be accepted that there is great disparity between the formal institutionalization of society and the real change of political culture.

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Popular movements and segmentary interest groups are important ingredients of today's civil society in Estonia, and will be so in the future as well. However, parties with the capacity for hegemonic structures carry the role of articulating a political dialogue. A real challenge for the parties is to create a political culture in which parties are accepted as legitimate instruments of representation and interest articulation. The success of the formation of parties is crucial to the processes of self-regulation and self-awareness of Estonian society.

5

The Estonian State and Immigrants and Minorities

The issue of civic/ethnic identity is one of major importance for all postcommunist states. This is due, in part, to the "Leninist extinction" of 1988-1991, but in Estonia it results mainly from the massive immigration of Russophone people. It is an Estonian idiosyncrasy that this is not so much to do with the minority problem as with the huge dispersion of Russian latecomers. Nonetheless the problem concerning the relationship between the state on the one hand and minorities and immigrants, on the other, refers to the universal: the nation-state is partially an amalgam of state, civic and ethnic orientations and organizations. Similarly, the civic and ethnic components of national identification and organization are partially antagonistic. The civic component places accent on the individual, the ethnic component on the group, the civic orientation is critical, the ethnic solidary. In a nation-state, the impersonal secular regime creates a domain in which all are treated equally. But ethnicity, ethnic identity in nation-states is one of the central legal bases, natural cleavages for the structuring of civil society. The problem for Estonia as a nation-state lies in creating the spaces for integrating (mainly Russian) immigrants into the Estonian state and society. It cannot succeed in this without accepting national minorities as self-governing, political, cultural, etc. subjects. The transition of Estonia from an imperialist "party state" to a "national state" also opened up an opportunity for serious progress in ethnic-civic relations. No other immigrant or historical residential ethnic minority in Estonia except the latecomer Russians could materialize its declared " n a tional rights". Ethnicity, as an organizational principle of community formation, was banned to real minorities. The creation of the legal frames for restructuring the relationship between the indigenous population and "civil garrison", the implementation of the

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citizenship institution, regulation of immigration etc. could not start until 1988 when Estonians finally found a legal way to save the nation. During the past six years Estonia has experienced an evolution through two stages which put the question in different ways and proposed very different solutions. In the incumbent period of 1 9 8 8 - 1 9 9 1 the question was, "How to combine the nation-state, the priority of an indigenous nation with the integration of immigrants and ethnic security of the Estonian nation, the survival of language and culture"? This starting point had reduced the antagonism between civic and ethic components of national identifications. During the second stage of nation-building in 1 9 9 2 - 1 9 9 4 , following the launch of the restoration of national independence on a basis of legal continuity, the question is "whether it is possible to combine the nation-state with the integration of non-citizens and democratic perspectives of the state".

6

Legal Frames of Estonian Nation-Building and Immigrants' Integration Options

In 1 9 8 7 - 1 9 9 1 Estonia had a choice of different options with regard to state-building. The national charismatic ideology of national radicals, pursuing "the struggle for the predominance and increased influence of the nationality indigenous to the nation-state of Estonia" (Furtado, Chandler 1992: 66), was still in a marginal position at the beginning of the struggle for independence in 1 9 8 8 - 1 9 8 9 . The Language Law of the Estonian S S R , which was passed on January 18, 1989, was the first of its kind in the whole of Empire (and was extremely important in granting to the Estonians for the first time their language rights in the Empire). It also created for the first time since annexation an effective legal basis for an Estonian state (political) identity and public space for communication on the basis of the Estonian language. The law also recognized Russian as a second official language, providing individuals the o p portunity to conduct their affairs in Estonian or in Russian. The language law also granted "the cultural organizations of ethnic communities use their national language in conducting their affairs and have publications, forms, and documents printed in their own language" (Furtado, Chandler 1992: 7 5 - 7 6 ) . Once the forced assimilation of Estonians was discontinued, there emerged the perspective for the formation of two more or less balanced ethnic communities. The next real step towards civil society was a "Draft Law of the Estonian E S S R on the Ethnic Rights of Citizens of the Estonian E S S R " . According to the draft all nationalities of the Estonian S S R have the right

The Emergence of Civil Society in Estonia

115

- to set up ethnic cultural associations; - to receive general, secondary and college education in Estonian, Russian, or other languages in state educational establishments or through cultural associations; - to organize dissemination of information and cultural activities in their native language, perform ethnic rituals and practise religious rights; the state provides financial aid and support to national associations. The Ukrainians, Armenians, Jews, etc. began immediately to organize their national communities and created the Forum of National Minorities which brought together more than twenty minorities. Hence the principal minority problem was resolved. In 1989 many crucial problems of the Soviet colonization politics inheritance got a perspective to be legalized with implementing Estonian S S R citizenship, granting it to everybody on the principle of zero-option without any objective preconditions. The Supreme Council and Government prepared some drafts. Soon, however, citizenship was to remain the critical problem confronting the original liberal tune of the Popular Front dominated Estonian state-building. Implementation of the liberal principles of "procedural i m personalism" in the citizenship law was overshadowed not so much by problems of the "nationalism" of Estonians as by the tense ethnic relations which were perceived by Estonians (Haug 1993). Mainstream Estonian politicians began to oppose the implementation of a "zero option" on a community that was not willing to integrate into Estonian society, showing a greater interest in saving the Empire. Independence in autumn 1991, based as it was on the restitutionalist model, very much complicated the problem of the self-identification of immigrants. The social and cultural alienation of a large part of the Russophones now became an open legal and political fact. Their legal status was undetermined. The citizenship law dating from 1938 was reintroduced on February 2 6 , 1 9 9 2 , stating that a model of routine standard of citizenship was applied in Estonia. In spite of juridical argumentation, the decision caused rapid and profound changes in the ethnic composition of the electorate and capacity for civil society formation. The peak of instability and disintegration in the Estonian state and m i grant-community relations occurred in 1993 when the number of people applying for Russian citizenship was at its highest. Since then the figure has dropped significantly: a total of 45,000 permanent residents of Estonia (data from summer 1994) have applied for Russian citizenship and the same number have applied for Estonian citizenship. The Law on Election of the Local Self-government, entering into force on May 1 9 , 1 9 9 3 , inspired some dramatic steps in the name of fair "civil integration" by some Russian local

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communities. In July 1993 an illegal referendum was held in Narva and Sillamäe on the following question: " D o you want the town to have a status of ethnic territorial autonomy within the Republic of Estonia, with equal rights guaranteed to all residents in its territory"? The response was overwhelmingly yes. This referendum and the Narva City Council Resolution of August 2 3 , 1 9 9 3 , " T h e fundamentals of a special status of the City of Narva", signalled an identity crisis among Russians and continued to look for the institutionalization of territorial self-government. However there was a clear positive change among the immigrants in identity-shaping towards the Estonian Republic (Kirch 1 9 9 4 : 1 4 ) . The Law on Aliens, passed on July 8 , 1 9 9 3 , ended the juridical confusion and hundreds of thousands of people were legally switched out of the official Estonian society. The Law on Applying Permanent Residency (July 1994) defined the legal status of persons without Estonian citizenship.

7

Legal and Civil Integration Perspectives

Despite the domination of the restitutional strategy in Estonian state-building and the relatively pure "organizational capital" of the immigrants, the disintegration process in society was accompanied by an integration tendency. Tensions and difficulties in integrating immigrants into Estonian society have been represented by the opponents of the Estonian Republic mainly as a legal problem, but the building up of civil society in a mainly Russophone c o m munity involves equally serious cultural, mental and organizational problems. Some 60 per cent of all non-Estonians have been born outside Estonia, and they have very close contact with their family relations and cultural heritage. In this context the emergence of an ethnically structured, non-Russian civil society was socially and "nationally" the challenge for the Soviet and Russian, eventually traditional and charismatic imperial ontology. The c o n cept of civil society located an interest group without referring to a state in which the individual resides. The national identity of Russians that was just taking shape, referred strongly to the Soviet Union. The Soviet-type quasi-civil institutions happened to be more "organic" for the Russian community and were not modernized but stagnated, stressing the function of their old quasi-state institutions that were now opposed to the Estonian state. The basic structures of the self-organization of Russophones have been revitalized Soviet "charismatic" structures: "working collectives", organizations of "army veterans", "veterans of Afghanistan", "workers' detachments", etc. (Ruutsoo 1993: 195-214).

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In the context of Russian patriarchal political culture, the factory has also become a substitute of civil society. The factory was a neo-patriarchal provider of housing, holidays, medical attention, and social activities. These factories also represented and symbolized in Estonia a living connection with the Empire. The "strike committees", the main vehicles through which retrograde Russophones opposed Estonian democratic reforms, were originally based on Soviet-type work collectives councils. It also turned out that the Russophone minority had very limited capacity to voice the interests of different groups. It is obvious that some "civil" institutions were launched or at least supported by the KGB. Examples are provided by Interfront weeklies (Kruus 1990) and pirate radio-stations (such as "Nadezda" or "Voice of Intermovement"), which also had sister-stations in Latvia and Lithuania. In May 1991 a TV station called "Intervideo Nadezda" was launched, an alternative to national television with retranslation units all over the Baltic states. All these stations were built by the military under Moscow command and actually on military bases. The turning-point in attitudes towards immigrants was represented by the aborted coup in August 1991 which decisively changed not only the power relations, but was also a watershed in the self-organization of the migrant community. Immigrants lacked their main Soviet-type quasi-civil structures. The most powerful political organizations of Russophones in Estonia (the pro-Moscow Communist Party, the United Council of Workers' Collectives, Intermovement, etc.) were easily destroyed in the wake of the failed coup. A full inquiry was launched into the activities of the coup collaborators. The local councils of Narva, Sillamäe and Kohtla-Järve decided to recognize the laws of the Estonian Republic, but they were dissolved. The majority of the old leaders lost their credibility and some of them escaped to Russia. The question now was whether it would be possible to combine the idea of an ethnocentric nation-state with the civil integration of non-citizens and stable development perspectives of the state/nation. The rights of immigrants for participation in (and integration into) Estonian society are regulated by the Constitution of the Republic of Estonia, which was passed in June 1992. There are only some potential restrictions for non-citizen activities in different fields that are relevant to civil society formation (self-organizing, self-governing), and no important constitutional guarantees for non-citizens are missing. The Main Law says that "unless otherwise established by law this right (to engage in commercial activities and form profit-making associations and leagues) equally exists for Estonian citizens and citizens of foreign states and stateless persons who are sojourning in Estonia (...) In the elections to the local government council all persons who have attained the age of eighteen years and who reside permanently on the territory of the local government unit shall have the right to vote in

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accordance of conditions prescribed by law". Political organization of noncitizens is limited, but "All persons shall have a right to form nonprofit associations and leagues. Only Estonian citizens may be members of political parties". This limitation corresponds with European standards but it does present the risk that non-citizens resort for purposes of political mobilization to cover organizations and that this will restrict the promotion of the political culture of the masses who wish to make themselves heard. It provides additional grounds for the "charismatic impersonality" type of regulation instead of the procedural impersonality dominant in democratic society. Similar restrictions are in effect concerning the right for constituting Cultural Autonomy. Art. 51 declares that "Ethnic minorities shall have a right, in their interests to establish institutions of self-government in accordance with conditions and procedures established by the Law on Cultural Autonomy for Ethnic minorities". But the law itself (Law on Cultural Minorities) states that "This Law considers as national minorities citizens of Estonia". Not much progress has been made in the integration of Russian latecomers. After August 1991 there were two distinct periods in the development of the political civil society of Russian speakers: the period of disintegration and disorientation (August 1991 — December 1992) and the period of moderate and controversial consolidation, which began to take shape when the R u s sophones managed to create their quasi-parliament, i.e. Representative A s sembly in January 1993. It represented different cultural, public and national movements (Park 1994: 81). The Russian-speaking political and cultural elite appeared to be weak and without mass support. Inherited from the pre-Soviet period, the "organizational capital" of Russophones is comparatively weak. The revitalization of pre-communist institutions in the Russian community has been much less successful than in the Estonian community. Immigrants are more atomized and more rootless than the residents of Russia. There have been some desperate attempts to restore the Cossack movement and somewhat more successful moves to organize the old nobility. However, some of the cultural traditions inherited by the Russians (such as the Slavic song festivals) dating back to the period of the First Estonian Republic have been revitalized (Solovei 1994: 4). The creation of pro-Estonian cultural networks through a new press supported by private funds has not succeeded. The majority of the new media networks (such as Radio Tallinn, Den za dnjom) are inspired by Estonian private business on commercial principles. However cable T V networks compensate for the absence of local Russian T V programming (Russian T V broadcasts were cut down in spring 1994) to prevent the deepening of a cultural and information vacuum. The immigrants have displayed the greatest

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capacity for adaption in promoting civil initiatives in the economic sphere. Economic interest groups and emerging petty-bourgeois structures appear to be the most important cement of the Russophone community. Quite radical shifts are taking place in the transformation of a large part of the inherited patriarchal institutions (Kirch 1994). Citizens and non-citizens do not enjoy equal rights in any country, but the Estonian idiosyncrasy is that the percentage of non-citizens is in most cases comparatively small. It cannot be denied that the integration of Russians in Estonia is decisive for the growth of civil society. The greater the number of people involved in the realization of democracy, the higher the standards of morality, public order and general welfare, the more secure are the rights and liberties of each individual. The critical problem confronting Estonia today has to do with citizenship, in a more profound sense than just political participation. Its essence lies in the reorientation of large groups of the population to impersonal norms expressed in procedural values and norms and the integration of them into Estonian society.

8

Conclusions

The emergence of a modern civil society in which the dominant institutions are procedural, the dominant actor is the individual and the dominant ethos is empirical, has got under way in Estonia. However, the Leninist legacy, which is still very much alive throughout Eastern Europe, continues to make an impact. Estonia currently appears as a collection fragmented, mutually suspicious communities with little cultural support for tolerant and individually self-reliant behaviour. The liberal democratic society rests not only on laws but equally on public virtues. Regrettably, both the Estonian state and civil society still bear visible birthmarks which separate the former from the European-style law-based state and the latter from the "symbiotic civil society", that is, the civil society which complements the state. The "primary" civil society of Estonia is fragmentary, it often operates in a legal void and is threatened by pathological tendencies. The features of the administrative state and "reform dictatorship" amplifies or complements the "pathological" tendencies in creating civil society, expressed by the emergence of aggressive protest movements (the Union of Estonian Citizens), corporative tendencies in recruiting new elites (the politization of fraternities), encouraging illegal civil initiatives (the movement of voluntary riflemen), emerging mafia-like structures in the economy, etc.

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Estonia does not yet have a fully institutionalized civil society; far from it. Much progress is required at least in the following domains of society: -

the ethno-state has to be transformed into a liberal national state; rumours as the mode of discourse must be replaced by rational dialogue; there must be free and unobstructed distribution of resources; and communities must be to familiarized with "methodically rational action".

References Arato, Andrew, Social Movements and Civil Society in the Soviet Union, in: Sedaitis, Judith B., Butterfield, Jim (eds.), Perestroika from Below. Social Movements in the Soviet Union, Westview Press, Boulder, San Francisco 1991. Calhoun, Craigh, Nationalism and Civil Society: Democracy, Diversity and Self-Determination, International Sociology, Vol. 8, No. 4,1994. Draft Action Programme of the Communist Party of Estonia, September 10,1989, in: Furtado Jr., F., Chandler, Andrea (eds.), Perestroika in the Soviet Republics. Documents on the National Question, Westview Press, Boulder, San Francisco 1992. Habermas, Jürgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1991. Haug, Toomas, Meist Vivad Saada Liberaalse Ühiskonna Vangid, Kultuur ja Elu, No. 5,1993. Hoyer, Svennik, Lauk, Epp, Vihalemm, Peeter (eds.), Towards a Civic Society. The Baltic Media's Long Road to Freedom. Perspectives on History, Ethnicity and Journalism, NotaBaltica, Tartu 1993). Ingram, Judith, The Media War, Uncaptive Minds. Winter/Spring 1993, Vol. 6, No. 1 (22). Jowitt, Ken, New World Disorder. The Leninist Extinction, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford 1992. Kadastik, Mart, Vim ja ajakiijandus: ju ja ilu numbrid, Postimees, April 20,1994. Kirch, Aksel, Kirch, Marika, Tuisk, Tarmo, Non-Estonian Population Today and Tomorrow. A Sociological Overview, Tallinn 1992. Kirch, Marika, Identificational Diversity in Estonia. Grounds for Identification or Grounds for Disintegration, Changing Identities in Estonia, in: Kirch, Marika, Leitin, David, Sociological Facts and Commentaries, Estonian Academy of Sciences, Tallinn 1994. Kirch, Aksel, Russians as Dominating Minority in Estonia. Perspectives for Economic Integration into Estonian Society, paper presented at the Conference Citizens and Non-citizens —Legal and Sociological Problems in Restituted Estonian National State, Tallinn May, 31-June, 2,1994. Kivirähk, Juhan, Rosimannus, Rain, Pajumaa, Indrek, The Premises for Democracy: A Study of Political Values in Post-Independent Estonia Journal of Baltic Studies, Vol. XXIV, No. 2,1993. Kruus, Rein, "Wirulasest" Eesti Ekspressini, Vikerkaar, 1990, No. 1, 2. Lauristin, Maiju, Eesti riigil puudub meediapoliitika, Kultuurileht, Feb. 11,1994. Luik, H.H., Abiks ajalehtede erastajale, Eesti Ekspress, January 29,1993, No. 3. Park, Andrus, Ethnicity and Independence: The Case of Estonia in Comparative Perspective, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 46. No. 1,1994. Rose, Richard, Maley, William, VILMORUS, LASOPEC and EMOR, Nationalities in the Baltic States. A Survey Study, Studies in Public Policy, No. 222, Center for Study of Public Policy, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, 1994. Rosimannus, Rain, Parteistunud Eesti on vaid kujutelm V, Hommikuleht, 30 July 1994. Russian Representative Assembly (Estonia). On the Human Rights in Estonia, The Monthly Survey of Baltic and Post-Soviet Politics, Panor Press, Sakala Center, Tallinn, May 1993.

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Ruutsoo, Rein, Transitional Society and Social Movements in Estonia, 1987-1991, Proceedings of Estonian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol. 42, No. 2,1993. Shils, Edward, The Virtue of Civil Society, Government and Opposition, Vol, 26, No. 1, Winter 1991, p. 3-20. Solovei, N., Paper presented at the Conference Citizens and Non-citizens — Legal and Sociological Problems in Restituted Estonian National State, Tallinn May, 31-June, 2,1994. Väljas, Vaino, Eestimaa Kommunistliku Partei Keskkomitee materjalid 4. mai 1989, Eesti Raamat, Tallinn 1989. Väljas, Vaino, EKP Ülesannetest Poliitilise Situatsiooni Stabiliseerimisel Vabariigis, Eestimaa Kommunistliku Partei Keskkomitee X V Pleenumi materjale, Eesti Raamat, Tallinn 1989. Veidemann, Rein, Rahvuslik ringhääling peab olcraa valitsusest sltumatu, Hommikuleht, No. 27., Feb. 3,1994. Veskimägi, Margo, The Situation in Estonian Printed Media, Emor reports 1992, Vol. 2, No. 4. Visnap, Margot, Eesti dramaturg — uhke iiksiklane. Intervjuu limar Kiilvetiga, Teater Muusika Kino, 1991, No. 1.

Social Stratification under Privatization in Lithuania Meilute Taljunaite

1

Introduction

The ongoing economic reform in the Republic of Lithuania, and particularly the privatization of state property, has not only economic but also social impacts. Increasing social differentiation and social mobility in the new circumstances is leading to the emergence of new social groups. No detailed sociological surveys have been conducted of social differentiation in Lithunia. Most people in the active labour force are engaged in companies and institutions owned by the state. Hardly any statistics are available on the operations of private companies and businesses.

2

The Process of Privatization

The main concern in this study is to better understand the process of private property restitution. To an extent privatization and restitution have the same purpose, but they are nonetheless two distinct processes. Privatization implies a process of state property being privatized within a legal framework, whereas restitution implies a process of (legally) restoring proprietary rights which were denied by the government without any compensation to the (legal) owners when the property was nationalized, confiscated or seized. In this survey the focus is on the private property that is either privatized or restored according to proprietary rights. We look at private property as a basis of social differentiation: What is the origin and basis of the "new classes" in society, and how are the "old classes" reconstructed? Legislation on privatization is already in place in Lithuania. The privatization modalities draw largely on the models of former Czechoslovakia and Poland. Following the example of former Czechoslovakia, Lithuania opted

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for "mass privatization" by distributing vouchers free of charge to Lithuanian citizens. The Lithuanian system also has an "age element". As in Czechoslovakia, privatization started with the selling off of small-scale companies in auctions before moving on to major companies. This was based on a voucher system. State companies were first transformed into state-owned joint-stock companies before being privatized; in this Lithuania followed the Polish example. Up to 30 per cent of the shares of these joint-stock companies could then be bought by the workers on very favourable terms. According to the original plans for the privatization of state property in the shape of investment cheques, this should have been completed by June 1994, but the deadline has now been pushed forward. To date the people of Lithuania have used only about half of their investment cheques. By October 1994, privatization had been completed for 93 per cent of residential dwellings, 83 per cent of farms, and 67 per cent of the companies that were to be included in the first stage of privatization. In these companies state capital accounts for only 34 per cent of the share stock. Stock exchange markets in Lithuania were opened in September 1993. In September 1993, when the project on "Social Changes in Nordic and Baltic Countries" was launched, official statistics put the number of companies in Lithuania at over 95 100, showing an increase of 5500 over the figure for June. The following types of business enterprise are recognized as legitimate in Lithuania: 1. Private entrepreneurship where the company is owned by one or a few people 2. Real partnership 3. Limited partnership 4. Joint-stock company 5. State or municipal enterprise and state-owned joint-stock company The privatization of state property had a major impact on the setting up of these different types of companies. Owners, part-owners and stockholders emerged to form a new social stratum. Even though the process is now slowing down, the momentum is still there. During a period of two years, 36 per cent of the state capital that was intended to be privatized, was so. Statistics compiled by the Privatization Department of the Ministry of Economics indicate that during this period (from 1 September 1991 to 19 September 1993) 68 per cent of all units, a total of 3901, covered by the initial plan were privatized. More than one third of state capital was transferred into private hands at a value of 382 million litas.

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Social Stratification under Privatization in Lithuania Table 1 :

Number of Companies in Lithuania in 1993 June 1993

1.

2. 3. 4.

5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

State enterprises, institutions and organizations State joint-stock companies Municipal enterprises, institutions and organizations Municipal joint-stock companies, institutions and organizations State enterprises, institutions and organizations, for special purposes Municipal enterprises, institutions and organizations for special purposes Administrative organizations Financial enterprises and organizations Public organizations General partnerships Limited partnerships Private corporations Corporations Private companies of cooperative societies Cooperative societies Agricultural societies Joint ventures with foreign investments Non-commercial associations Non-profit companies Entrepreneurship without status of juridical person Entrepreneurship with status of juridical person Total

October 1993

3932

4038

124

157

7470

7777

115

136

421

451

111 557

118 563

220 513 905 124 16128 1440

222 552 920 125 17223 1647

148 149 4221

134 192 4378

492 80 134

552 81 184

52053

55541

117 89627

118 95109

More than 100 small companies were immediately sold in September 1991 through public auctions to domestic investors. At the end of January 1992, most of the small companies for sale had been purchased, as had a number of major enterprises. From September 1991 to March 1992, a total of 1650 small enterprises were sold through public auctions for more than 400 million roubles, at about four times the initial asking price. A further 300 medium-

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sized and major enterprises were sold through share subscriptions, in which state capital totalled some 1.05 billion roubles. Prior to the first privatization programme a full list was compiled of the companies concerned and their organization structures. The list included 3,500 companies or their affiliates. Pursuant to the Law on the Initial Privatization of State Property, the process of privatization was carried out concomitantly with de-monopolization, in which the aim was to disintegrate monopolized structures into smaller self-dependent economic units. The final list thus comprised more than 7600 companies, of which 4580 are included in the privatization programme. Some 3215 small enterprises whose authorized capital does not exceed one million talons, are to be sold by auction. Over half or 57 per cent of the total number of companies on the list for privatization in Lithuania have been successfully privatized within 18 months. There has been more difficulty with larger business units. Since September 1991, 1380 or 67 per cent of the 2076 major enterprises listed have been privatized. The capital of the privatized units represents 47 per cent of the state capital of enterprises included in the privatization programme. The difference between the number of privatized enterprises and privatized capital can be explained by the fact that most of the biggest enterprises have been so-called all-union enterprises which are largely dependent on raw material supplies from the Commonwealth of Independent States. Since economic relations with the major suppliers are disrupted and the creation of contacts with the western markets requires huge investments, most people prefer to participate in the privatization of small- and medium-sized companies which are more flexible and which offer the potential of quick profits. The number of employees engaged in units privatized by public subscription is in excess of 280 000. Several amendments to the Law on the Initial Privatization of State Property were adopted by Parliament in September 1992 and February 1993 to expand the scope and modalities of privatization. By the beginning of October 1994, 436 companies had been privatized, or 75.8 pere cent of the 575 coming under the Ministry of Trade and Industry. By January 8, 1995, 5158 enterprises had been privatized in Lithuania, or 78 per cent of all on the list for privatization. Between September 1991 and October 1994,76 per cent of all companies set for privatization or 4885 enterprises were privatized. Out of these, 2344 were privatized by way of public subscription, 2502 were sold in auctions, 7 were sold in competitions for the best business plan and 39 sold for hard currency. The capital of all these enterprises amounts to 3.5 billion litas (indexed price).

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Social Stratification under Privatization in Lithuania Table 2:

Privatization of Stote Property (by October 15,1994) Number of objects

Total of which: Industry Transport Construction Trade Dwellings Everyday services Other branches

Capital in million Lt

4885

3510

6462 131 540 1583 248

234 119 428 267 48

949

58

788

356

Source: Ministry of Economy

Privatized companies vary in terms of their current standings and situations. The best results and prospects are shown by enterprises in trade as well as in the public and service branches. Industrial businesses earlier engaged in exporting products with no local use are in the most difficult situation. In order to pull through they will require tax reductions as well as a competent and experienced management. Most of the privatization has been accomplished by property sales. In trade 1333 or 77 per cent of all companies listed have been sold, while the figures for public services were 867 and 84 per cent, and for industry 482 and 84 per cent. The value of all the state property sold amounts to 227 million litas. This has fallen well short of expectations: only 34 per cent of the state property that was intended for privatization has actually been privatized in 1993. In February 1992 the privatization process was extended to joint-stock companies. To date a total of 360 companies have been founded at a capital value of 232 million litas, representing about 29 per cent of all privatized state property. Privatization using hard currency is also regulated by the Law on the Initial Privatization of State Property. Initially the law stated that the list of enterprises to be privatized for hard currency must be accepted by the Parliament. This list of 114 enterprises was prepared by the government in September 1991, but it was not until September 1992 that implementation got under way. June 1992 saw the introduction of the tender procedure in the privatization process. Then, in September 1992, two other methods of privatization for hard currency were adopted by Parliament: share auctions as well as direct sale to investors in cases where only quotation has been received. The right to initiate privatization for hard currency is given to the enterprises themselves, to company founders and to potential investors.

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Through joint ventures, the establishment of new companies, or shareholding in existing firms, Lithuania is primed for foreign investment with a wide range of incentives. Lithuania also offers foreign investors significant savings. Foreign businesses in Lithuania qualify for a 50 per cent reduction in taxes on profits for six years from the date they take in their first income. Neither dividends paid out to foreign investors nor profits taken out of the country are taxed. Local profits can be repatriated in hard currency, without restrictions or taxes. And foreign nationals can repatriate their salaries in hard currency. Table 3:

Number of Joint Ventures by Country (1 January 1987 — 30 September 1994) Joint ventures

Foreign capital companies

JV & Foreign capital companies

Total with foreign countries including:

3138

988

4126

Canada Denmark Finland France Germany Netherlands Norway Poland Sweden United Kingdom United States Russia Ukraine Byelorussia Latvia Estonia

35 54 50 42 552 45 28 471 66 58 182 822 183 143 44 36

11 27 21 12 151 20 21 151 38 39 78 175 34 26 27 34

46 81 71 54 703 65 49 622 104 97 260 997 217 169 71 70

Source: Ministry of Economy

Privatization for hard currency began in August 1992. By the end of September 1993, 25 real estates had been sold in auctions, mostly to Lithuanian citizens. Only two real estates were bought by joint ventures. One enterprise has already been privatized by an open competition, i.e. the state tobacco factory of Klaipeda. The multinational giant Philip Morris has already transferred USD 10.5 million to the Republic of Lithuania. There are also the inevitable black holes in the Lithuanian process of privatization. One of these is the selfish use by dishonest or simply ignorant people of the permission of every citizen to legally buy shares belonging to

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others. The current law divides people into two categories: outsiders and insiders. Insiders are people who work for the privatized enterprise and who therefore are not able to buy company shares on favourable conditions. It is stipulated that these shares can only account for 50 per cent of the total share stock. These shares are rapidly resold, often for two or three times they cost to buy. Table 4:

Privatization in Lithuania 1 September 1991 - 1 9 September 1993 Privatized objects Total number of privatizable objects

Total privatizable

%of enterprises

Large enterprises

Small enterprises

8478 1608448

3901 382106

68 36

1726 373831

2175 8275

Industry: Number of objects State capital

1158 967819

482 227513

62 35

447 227361

35 170

Transport: Number of objects State capital

296 197548

106 16162

71 16

100 16119

6 43

Construction: Number of objects State capital

815 89158

415 51394

70 64

404 51248

11 146

Trade: Number of objects State capital

2474 119421

1333 35900

77 33

347 32897

986 3003

Public utilities: Number of objects State capital

525 133124

125 2818

50 4

32 2371

93 448

Public services: Number of objects State capital

1124 12960

867 7460

84 66

145 5341

722 2299

Other branches: Number of objects State capital

2086 88418

573 40660

49 69

251 38493

322 2167

Total in Lithuania Number of objects State capital (thousand litas)

Note: Privatizable objects are units that can be privatized, i.e. that will be sold according to the Law of Primary Privatization of State Wealth. They account for 67 per cent (5722) of all objects in Lithuania and their capital represents 66 per cent (in excess of one billion litas) of all existing capital in Lithuania.

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An EC expert group investigating the process of privatization completed its work in autumn 1993. The group observed that the main purpose of mass privatization in the country was to equally and correctly divide the capital among the people. At the same time, however, the process does not allow for equal participation in privatization. Those who can offer more money for privatized property cannot buy the property because of existing limitations, and the potential price of privatized property is lower than it would be without limitations. The expert group concluded that most of the state property has been sold under special conditions and for much lower prices to certain select groups because of their priority rights, such as workers in the privatized enterprises: - Before privatization the workers can acquire shares in the profits remaining in the enterprise. - Before privatization the workers and shareholders of private companies can buy out the state shares by using the profits remaining in the enterprise or by investment cheques and money. - During the privatization process workers can earn 50 per cent or more of their shares compared with the nominal share prices. - After privatization they can buy the remaining part of the state capital (shares) by money, investment cheques or profit (depending on the type of enterprise). So what remains for those who are not lucky enough to work for the companies that are being privatized? Experts believe that workers in privatized companies are more efficient, thus reducing conflicts between labour and management. In advanced capitalist countries employees own no more than 10 per cent of company shares. In East Central Europe the proportion is higher at about 20 per cent, while the figure in Russia is 51%. Legislation concerning the property of workers should therefore be changed to prevent them from gaining too large a share in the company. The shares that are now sold under priority arrangements to the workers should be sold on the open markets. It has also been suggested that limited auctions and closed subscription should be discontinued.

3

Privatization of the Land

The reorganization of property relations has been one of the most important tasks for the independent Lithuanian state. Proprietary rights for the remaining real estate were re-established by legislation, resulting in the question of

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the privatization of state property and creating new types of property rights in Lithuania: the property of the state and municipalities as well as private and cooperative property (including joint-stock companies, farming and religious communities, etc.). The social effects of the rewritten legislation on property rights needs to be carefully weighed. The question of land restitution, on the other hand, is not covered by current legislation: there are no rules as to what kind of compensation workers and farmers will be granted when their land is transferred. Formally, they have the right to buy it, but of course most farmers up until now have had little or no landed property at all. They do not have the money to buy the land they have been farming sometimes for all their life because up until 1965 they worked for the kolkhoz for practically no wage, selling their produce under state regulation at extremely low prices. The up-side of the years of strict control is reflected in the renewed vigour that is seen across Lithuania's entire business and industry sector. The same applies to agriculture and food processing, which accounts for two fifths of GDP. Some 17 per cent of the Lithuanian population still work on the land, while many others are employed in related industries. After years of collective farming, most state-held land has been returned to its prewar owners and their heirs, some of whom are now pooling their resources in farm cooperatives. Cooperatives now account for more than two thirds of acreage, and a land-rental market is developing. The average cooperative has 1250 acres, while private farms average 22 acres. Table 5:

The Privatization of Agricultural Enterprises in 1993 1993

Number of privatized agricultural enterprises - proportion of objects expected to be privatized Value of privatized wealth 182.1 million It - of which: earned by farmers earned by agricultural companies and other

1160 100 %

7.4 million It 174.7 million It

Source: Ministry of Economy

At the end of 1989 the number of former owners reclaiming their farms and beginning to work them was only 1200; by the end of 1993 the figure was 111 000, with some 210 000 people working on the farms. By now 96 per cent of all workers engaged in agriculture operate in the private sector.

Meilute Taljunaite

132 Table 6:

Breakdown of Farming Land by Users (%)

State farms' farming land By population Fanners' fanning land Other

1991

1992

1993

72.7 25.2 2.1

51.9 25.9 17.9 4.3

41.2 26.5 25.9 6.4

-

Source: Lithuania in Figures 1993: 60.

By September 1993, a total of 5163 farms had been founded according to the Law of Peasants' Farms in Lithuania. The total area of privatized land property was 87 600 hectares. A total of 424 811 people had received 2 - 3 hectares of land on the basis of a parliamentary decision in June 1990, with the total area of land adding up to 869 900 hectares. Almost one million hectares of land has been donated, remaining beyond the reach of the rural population who should own it. It is not surprising then that the Lithuanian government legislated the restitution of land to private and public property, and also the system of distribution of land resources. Table 7:

Farmers

Number of fanners at year-end, thousand Land possessed by farmers, thousand hectares Per cent of total land area

1991

1992

1993

5.9

73.0

111.4

94.0

683.3

986.8

2.0

18.3

27.0

1991

1992

1993

5.9

73.0

111.4

94.0

683.3

986.8

16

9.4

8.9

Source: Lithuania in Figures 1993: 64. Table 8:

Private Farms

Number of private farms, thousand Total area of land allotted, thousand ha Average land area, ha Source: Lithuania in Figures 1993: 66.

Social Stratification under Privatization in Lithuania

4

133

Social Strata According to Material Status

Most of the private enterprises, joint-stock companies and other partnerships set up in Lithunia cannot be compared to the corresponding units in advanced capitalist countries in terms of either business operations, organizational efficiency or management. The lack of statistics on business operations obviously complicates the task of making meaningful distinctions within society on the basis of the criteria that sociologists typically use in their analyses of advanced countries. Only some 30 per cent of all enterprises in the country provide information on their operations to the Statistical Department of Lithuania. When the information is provided, it is given for negative reasons: the entrepreneurs or managers know that that information cannot be used against them. However, even the limited information that is available does allow us to examine the social changes that have taken place during the emergence of new types of partnership system. The first meeting of the services involved was held in Vilnius in summer 1994 and was devoted to the problem of the unofficial labour market. At the meeting it was stressed that the detrimental effects of working on the unofficial markets are suffered primarily by the workers themselves. Without official registration and a labour contract, the worker is not entitled to social safety networks such as pensions, benefits for temporary incapacity to work, paid holidays, etc. The number of people currently working in the private sector without a contract is increasing. From the latter half of 1993 until the beginning of 1994, the number of economically inactive people increased by 71 400 (from 1 719 100 to 1 790 500). These sorts of increases are typically explained as a result of the transfer of the economically active population to the unofficial labour market. The prognosis for year-end 1993 was that the number of people working illegally in Lithuania would be around 253 000. The ongoing privatization of the economy has brought certain changes in the employment structure. The number of workers in industry has dropped sharply by almost 70 000. As non-productive branches are mostly maintained by the state budget and the economic situation is deteriorating, these processes are bound to accelerate in the future. At present, a large part of the work force in the private sector (some 85 per cent) is concentrated in agriculture, industry and trade and public catering businesses. Large and increasing numbers are also changing jobs. However, the most significant tendency is the rapid decline in the number of workers in the state sector; numbers dropped by more than 335 000 in 1 9 8 9 - 1 9 9 2 ) . At the same time the numbers in the private sector have increased more than 10 times over, now standing at 450 000. The proportion of people working in the state sector has dropped from 80.0 to 63.0 per cent,

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in the sector of collective property from 17.7 to 13.2 per cent, while the figure for the private sector has increased from 2.3 to 23.8 per cent. Table 9:

Employed Population in State and Private Enterprises and Organizations in 1993 (average annual number)

Branches Total Agriculture, hunting & forestry Fishery Mining & extraction Processing industry Electricity, gas & water supplies Construction Wholesale & retail trade Hotels & restaurants Transport & security Communication Financial negotiating Real estate renting & commercial activities State administration & protection, necessary social insurance Education Health & social Other public, social, private activities

Total thousands

%

State enterprises thousands %

1778.2

100.0

814.8

100.0

963.4

100.0

399.3 1.5

22.4 0.1

13.8 0.4

1.7 0.1

385.5 1.1

40.0 0.1

4.0

0.2

1.6

0.2

2.4

0.3

419.6

23.6

230.8

28.3

188.8

19.6

33.4 126.8

1.9 7.1

33.2 39.1

4.1 4.8

0.2 87.7

0.0 9.1

171.8

9.7

36.4

4.5

135.4

14.1

19.1

1.1

10.6

1.3

8.5

0.9

81.2 18.7

4.6 1.0

53.7 18.6

6.6 2.3

27.5 0.1

2.8 0.0

21.2

1.2

4.6

0.6

16.6

1.7

39.6

2.2

32.2

3.9

7.4

0.8

56.6 136.4 95.8

3.2 7.7 5.4

56.6 136.1 93.3

6.9 16.7 11.4

0.0 0.3 2.5

0.0 0.0 0.3

153.2

8.6

53.8

6.6

99.4

10.3

Source: Lietuvos ekonoraine ir socialise raida 1989-1993: 7.

Private enterprises thousands %

Social Stratification under Privatization in Lithuania

135

The privatization of state property has resulted in a stratification that is based on the number of shares people hold and on the type of their income. This allows us evaluate and predict the formation of new types of enterprises. Some groups or strata can be found in the working population on the basis of two criteria, i.e. the relationship to the enterprise in which people are working and their source of income: 1. Owners of private enterprises (including farmers). The main source of income for this group is the profit from operations. 2. People who own a larger number of shares in partly or wholly privatized enterprises and organizations or private or other enterprises and who are engaged in those organizations as directors, managers, etc. Their income is in the form of a salary and partly in the form of dividends or other bonuses. 3. People who work in partly or fully privatized enterprises and organizations or private or other enterprises and who own only a few shares. Their income is mainly in the form of a salary. 4. People who work in partly or fully privatized enterprises and organizations or private or other enterprises and who do not own a single share. Their salary is their only income. These strata form a social hierarchy that is structured according to the number of shares owned and the type of personal income. For reasons mentioned earlier, this hierarchy cannot be formed on the basis of qualifications and incomes. Recently even workers' wages in different branches of industry have varied considerably. In many companies (food, milk, slaughtering, light industry, energy) average wages are several times higher than the average wage of state workers. Those who are unemployed and who live on social benefits are excluded from the hierarchy. The question as to how employment can be found for these people is a separate and very difficult problem that is currently being addressed.

5

Unemployment

The registration of jobless people was started in Lithuania in March 1991, and by the end of the year the number of people officially registered as unemployed at labour exchange offices was 4200. During 1992 the figure soared to 2 0 700. The unemployment rate increased most sharply in November and December 1992, when each month the number of unemployed went up by 4000. The number for August 1993 was 33 000 unemployed, i.e. 18 times higher the figure at the beginning of official registration, giving an unemployment rate of 1.5 per cent. Women accounted for 60 per cent of those

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without a job. By 1 January 1993, a total of 173 400 jobless people have registered at labour exchanges offices. The number of the unemployed has increased 10 times over during 1992 alone. It should be noted that the number of people registred as unemployed and the number of people searching for a job does not reflect the real unemployment situation because of the huge extent of hidden unemployment. When those people are included who are not working on a full-time basis or who are on so-called unpaid holiday, the number of unemployed people in 1993 amounted to between 180 000 and 200 000. Considering the effects of privatization, we may observe that unemployment has been growing at an exceptionally fast rate in 1993. According to calculations published by Labour Exchange, the unemployment rate was expected to rise to 5.8 per cent by year-end 1993, but in fact the increase in the figures was twice as slow as predicted. This is explained, first of all, by the slower rate of privatization. Also, state-run enterprises which have had to slow down production because of a shortage of raw materials and energy and which have considerable difficulty in selling their production, prefer to pay symbolic wages rather than lay off their workers. However, a new wave of unemployment is expected by the end of 1994. According to data published by the Ministry of Social Security, the number of unemployed people is expected to increase to 120 000, virtually proving the prognoses of the Labour Exchange. Table 10: People Out of Work, Job Applicants and Jobless (thousands)

Out of work, job applicants Blue-collar workers White-collar workers Male Female Level of unemployment % Level of joblessness %

1991

1992

1993

3.4 1.1 2.3 1.2 2.2

9.4 3.3 6.1 3.5 5.9

30.4 17.6 12.8 13.0 17.4

0.3 0.2

1.3 0.5

4.4 1.6

Sources: Uzimti ir neuzimti gyventojai 1994:13.

According to the official labour market statistics from October 1993, 66 000 were looking for jobs. Of them 64 700 were unemployed. Almost one fifth (5500 or 17.4%) of those unemployed lived in Vilnius; the corresponding figures for Panevezys were 2700 and 8.8 per cent; and for Taurage and Silute 3400 and 10.6 per cent. Over half of the unemployed (56.7 %) have been women. The level of unemployment in October decreased by 0.1 per cent. In

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Social Stratification under Privatization in Lithuania

September, the unemployment rate was 1.6 per cent of the economically active population. Table 11: "Out of Employment" and Unemployment (thousands) Non-employed & seeking work 1992 1993 6.5 11.8 15.1 17.9 19.2 19.0 19.4 20.1 23.3 25.8 44.6 66.5

January February March April May June July August September October November December

82.0 91.3 99.8 100.8 97.0 87.4 80.8 72.4 67.2 64.7 64.9 65.5

Unemployed 1992 1993 4.2 4.6 5.2 6.5 7.3 7.3 7.7 8.9 11.2 12.7 16.7 20.7

24.4 27.3 29.2 30.1 31.5 32.2 32.9 32.4 32.1 31.5 30.8 30.5

Source: Lithuania in Figures 1993: 48-49.

Table 12: Monthly Number of People Unemployed in 1993 (thousands)

January February March April May June July August September October

Number of unemployed

Male

Female

Factoryworkers

Office workers

24.4 27.3 29.2 30.1 31.5 32.2 32.9 32.4 32.1 31.5

10.0 11.4 12.0 12.4 13.4 14.4 14.8 14.2 14.1 13.7

14.4 15.9 17.2 17.7 18.1 17.8 18.1 18.2 18.0 17.8

12.3 14.2 15.7 16.3 17.6 19.0 19.6 19.2 19.1 19.0

12.1 13.1 13.5 13.8 13.9 13.2 13.3 13.2 13.0 12.5

The number of economically active people has decreased steadily from 1989 with the single exception of 1991. The number of people engaged in private companies has increased while that of people engaged in state enterprises has declined during the ongoing economic changes, i.e. the foundation of private, joint-stock companies and the growth of private employment. While in 1989 one fifth of the people were engaged in private enterprises, the figure for 1993 was 54 per cent of all workers.

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The current information on the labour market is very much incomplete, comprising as it does only those people who have registered officially as unemployed. Large numbers are also searching for a job without contacting the labour exchange. If hidden unemployment is included, experts believe the true level of unemployment is 2 - 3 times higher.

6

People's Interests and Conflicts

One of the main hypotheses with which we started this paper was that the source of the ongoing social crisis in Lithuania lies in the differences between the past and present society in terms of ambitions and interests, the nature of the political system and economic efficiency. The purpose of our project is to investigate the reconstructive mechanisms of social structure and its interactions with new economic processes and social policy, as well as the changes taking place in people's way of life and in their quality of life, the impacts of social policy, and the methodological developments in social research. A focal concern is with the "second economy", small-scale entrepreneurship and household industries. Furthermore, the connections between privatization, unemployment and various social processes is an issue of special interest. Research in the field of social policy is mainly concerned with explicating the changes in the status of various social groups, notably the formation of the "middle class". Another interesting task is to explore the preconditions for the activity of private enterprises and their owners and the impacts of legislation. Official tax policy and the availability of loans and other economic benefits significantly affect the operational environment of enterprises. Owners of private capital have now united in various organizations in order to gain greater leverage over legislation and to pressure the government to give them better chances for more expansive commercial relationships and for joint ventures with foreign countries in both West and East. This pressure is also exerted through political parties, movements and other interest groups in Parliament. The third and fourth social strata defined above consist of the majority of the working population. These strata are oriented towards the values of (1) activity in daily work as a source of sustenance, which can ensure the fulfillment of at least the most basic needs; and (2) communication with the social environment in the enterprise, institution or firm. These social strata are also interested in raising the level of their qualifications, increasing their

Social Stratification under Privatization in Lithuania

139

incomes, assuring their employment, and protecting their rights as wage earners. It would be useful to explicate one new social stratum. The slow process of privatization, the reduced production of consumption goods, the possibility of travelling to near-by countries and other reasons made possible the emergence of markets like "Gariunai" in the biggest cities of Lithuania. Several salespeople not only from Lithuania but from other near-by countries come to the market every day to sell their articles. Local students and unemployed people are dominant in this stratum. Even though their activity is merely speculative, these people consider this their job. Many of them are clearly future-oriented, collecting the capital they need to start up a more significant operation, proceeding perhaps to buy shares in a joint-stock company. In this sense their orientation is similar to that of entrepreneurs and businessmen. Their main purpose is to be ranked in the second or first stratum. The interests in this stratum are not similar to those in the other groups. There are inevitable conflicts of interest with the state and other social strata. 1. Some owners of private enterprises may be reluctant to transfer their capital to production because of high taxes and the instability of the current economic situation. This is disadvantageous to state institutions in working against the creation of new jobs. The problem could be avoided by a more rational and flexible tax policy and a policy encouraging the establishment of new enterprises. 2. Another problem as far as the state is concerned is represented by tax evasion on the part of entrepreneurs. This obviously affects the state budget and makes it difficult to pay salaries to those working in institutions financed by the state budget. The only way to resolve the contradiction is to tighten the financial control of private enterprises. 3. In private enterprises the main contradiction between the owners and labour seems to revolve around and conditions of employment. 4. Surveys have shown that only about one third of the workers who have worked in state enterprises can adapt to the new order and the faster pace of work in private enterprises. Older and unfit workers are therefore at greater risk of losing their jobs. This problem will only be resolved once new technology has been installed and the amount of manual labour is dramatically reduced. There is no doubt that the social structure in Lithuania will change in the near future. During the slow ongoing economic reform, the number of owners will increase (the first stratum). Enterprises will need more and more managers and other organizers (the second stratum). The third and fourth stratum will remain firm because of their relationship with private property. These strata will polarize according to other criteria than the number of shares they

140

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currently hold, i.e. the education, qualifications and competencies needed for work in the society of new technology. In the future, the working class will be made up of specialists and workers with high qualifications and the mass of workers of people with low qualifications. The former group will be paid better wages and they will be less at risk of losing their jobs. The latter group has no satisfactory guarantees of wages or even employment.

The Privatization of Agriculture and the Family Farm Ideology in the Baltic States Ilkka Alanen

1

Introduction

As in other post-socialist countries, the aim of the privatization of agriculture in the Baltic republics has been the replacement of collective farms by a system of Western family farms. However, it seems likely that Baltic agriculture will be marginalized, at least in the short term. Over time the range of alternatives will increase, although the circumstances will not favour the establishment of family farms. I will base these arguments on historical analogies with the conditions of Western peasant states, on fragmentary empirical data on the Baltic states (including some preliminary results of my own research), and on the results of more systematic empirical research on certain other post-socialist countries. The purpose of this article is to form a well-grounded theoretical framework for my empirical research on Baltic agriculture as part of the Baltic-Nordic Project (see also Alanen 1993 and 1994).

2

The Structural, Ideological and Juridical Background of the Present Land Reform

In all Baltic states, a production structure based on collective farms and private plots serves as the structural starting point of privatization programmes. The restitution of pre-socialist ownership rights has been chosen as the privatization strategy, as in all post-socialist countries with the exception of the former Soviet Union (in Poland and Yugoslavia landed property was never collectivized) (Brooks, Meurs 1994:17). After the countries were annexed to the Soviet Union, the highly centralized agricultural production of the Baltic states was first collectivized and then concentrated in a decreas-

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Ilkka Alanen

ing number of large farms. In Estonia, there were about 300 collective farms, with an average size of over 7,000 hectares, at the end of the socialist period. In Latvia there were 600 and in Lithuania about 1,000 collective farms. These farms owned a great number of food and other industries (e.g. building, garages), produced a wide variety of welfare services for the farm workers and their families (apartments, kindergartens, canteens), and helped maintain the overall infrastructure of the societies (the road network). My analysis focuses on agricultural primary production. This was, of course, only one part of the more extensive command economy, within which other elements of the agroindustrial complex (transportation, storage, food industries, the manufacture of production equipment, wholesale and retail trade, education, etc.) were also important. It is worth remembering that some of the problems of the socialist and the present transition period derive from this wider totality (World Bank 1992:15-42; Zhurek 1991: 299). During the Soviet period, large-scale production was supplemented by private plot farming, although not in a fully uncontradictory manner. Private plots constituted part of the production structure based on state and cooperative farms. In Lithuania these plots usually produced milk, beef cattle, potatoes, vegetables and fruit (Povilianus 1993:22). This complementariness was a general characteristic of Soviet-type agriculture. The private plots, the backyard gardens of the system, utilized the large labour reserve and effectively increased the supply, quality and variety of foodstuffs and helped collective farms reach their production goals. On the other hand, the collective farm offered the plot farmer routinely (Mclntyre 1992:82-84,86-88) various infrastructure services, including cattle feed, corn, fertilizers, calves, ploughing, sowing, advising, and channels for selling the produce. Povilianus (1993: 22) points out that a considerable share of costs in these small-holdings used to be covered by the state and collective farms. To a large extent the division into the social and the private was abolished, and not only large-scale production or the national economy, but also plot farmers themselves benefited from the system. Thus, Agócs and Agócs (1994a: 37-40) point out that although the Hungarian industrial workers who lived in the countryside and commuted to towns to work were badly paid and suffered from the worst working conditions, they could, thanks to their private plots, lead better and more secure lives than their city-dwelling counterparts. According to Tagányi (1994:4-5,16), plots allowed the rural people to adopt a consumerist way of life. Even in countries like the Soviet Union, East Germany and Czechoslovakia where plot farming was not very common, it played an important role. The structurally complementary and rather uncompetitive relationship between large-scale farming and plot farming is often described as symbiotic (e.g. Mclntyre 1991, 1992; Swain 1993; Hann 1993: 102), although the relation-

The Privatization of Agriculture and the Family Farm

143

ship had its problems. However, in many studies the private nature of the plots has been overemphasized, leading to overestimation of the future significance of small farming. Such erroneous estimations have often taken the form of the embourgeoisement thesis (Manchin, Szeleny 1985), or the thesis of the grey market, secondary economy, or the informal economy (Raig 1989), with the result that not even during the current transition has collective large-scale farming been analysed as a structural condition for plots and even new family farms. The relationship between collective and plot farms varied historically in the Soviet Union. The size of collective farms kept on growing, due, among other things, to improved machinery. The plots were not privately owned, and their acreage and production volume were regulated. The buildings, a limited number of cattle, and self-acquired tools were private property, however. The plot farmers used (in principle in exchange for a compensation) the collective property, such as machinery and cattle feed, and also marketed their produce through the collective's channels. The importance of the plots for both the rural population and the total economy was greatest before agricultural investments were stepped up after Stalin's death. Over time the production of the plot farmers shifted from market-oriented production to production aiming at self-sufficiency. In general the economic significance of plot farming tended to diminish. Most plot farmers gave up farming altogether, some became hobby farmers, and in some cases the work was left to women, children and pensioners. However, plot farmers continued to account for much of such marketed agricultural produce as potatoes, vegetables, eggs and pork. In 1955, plot farming still accounted for eight per cent of Estonia's total cultivated land area, in 1983 for only four per cent. In the mid-1980s the general economic problems of the Soviet Union further stagnated agriculture, and the importance of plot farming started to grow again. Furthermore, plot farmers increasingly began to market their produce themselves. During the years of perestroïka restrictions on production and acreage were gradually lifted and the founding of family farms proper was permitted. The plot farmers themselves were typically workers of collective farms, but also the rest of the population were able to cultivate patches of land in home gardens, gardens of summer cottages, and the garden plots of the urban population. However, there were great differences between the different parts and autonomous areas of the Soviet Union, and even between the Baltic republics. In 1989, Lithuanian plot farmers possessed 10.5 per cent of the cultivated land and accounted for 30.6 per cent of the gross production value. The figures for Latvia were as low as 5.2 and 24.5, and for Estonia lower still, 4.5 and 21.3. The differences between the republics were biggest in animal husbandry. Lithuanian plot farmers accounted for almost one third of the

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Ilkka Alanen

gross production value of animal husbandry, while their Latvian and Estonian counterparts made up only a fourth and a sixth of it, respectively. From the viewpoint of research on post-socialism it is worth noting that Lithuania was close to the Hungarian model, whereas Estonia resembled the former East Germany and Czechoslovakia. However, Palm (1992: 289) argues that in comparison to the former FSU, Estonian agriculture was efficient. The earnings of kolkhoz workers have exceeded those of industrial workers, unlike in the case in the FSU generally (Abrahams 1992:141-143; Kivistik 1994: 4-5; Morozov 1977; Poviliunas 1993: 22; Raun 1989: 250; Répássy, Symes 1993: 83-84; World Bank 1992:70,71-75,82-91,193; World Bank 1993: 91). The ownership relations prevailing in Baltic agriculture before the Soviet period were characterized by petty production. In Estonia, the average acreage just before collectivization was highest at 22.7 hectares (of which 8.4 was cultivated, 11.2 meadow, and 1.3 forest), and the acreage differences were the smallest. The average farm size was smallest in Lithuania (12.7 ha in 1940), but the landed property was less evenly distributed. The background of the farm structure was both the gradual autonomization of the peasantry from old dependencies, a development that started in the 1800s, and also the struggle, connected with the nationalist movement, against the German, Polish and Russian estate owners. At the beginning of the earlier period of independence this struggle culminated in radical land reforms that destroyed the estate owning class (on this, see Niitemaa, Hovi 1991). The current land reform is characterized by two main principles. The primary principle is the restoration of pre-socialist land ownership rights, and the secondary, complementary one consists in the privatization of the property (land, production plants) of the collective farms. There is, however, an interesting difference between the Baltic states. Latvian and Lithuanian legislation aims at a total replacement of collective farms, while Estonian legislation permits the re-establishment of agricultural cooperatives. However, there have also been attempts in Latvia and Lithuania to develop forms of privatization that would permit a better utilization of the current agricultural technology and infrastructure, which is based on large-scale production. Ideologically, the land reform policy is dominated by the negation of the social relations instituted during the Soviet occupation, and the moral basis of social legitimacy is sought in the in ter-war period (see Ruutsoo's contribution in this volume). In the Baltic states the project is strongly supported by the popular ideological combination of national identity, high work motivation and a peasant way of life. As argued by Anatol Lieven (1993: 355), the national-cultural image of the hard-working peasant farmer was indeed the key motivation of agricultural reforms in the Baltic in 1990-1992. Therefore it is not surprising that an opinion poll carried out in 1991 indicated

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that a clear majority of the inhabitants of all three countries regarded agriculture as the basis of economic recovery (Liepins 1993). Furthermore, experts regard agriculture as the locomotive of the overall economic restructuring to come (Palm 1992; Uzdauiniene, Kilius 1993). The movement of farm restoration is the result of a political game on Estonians' ancient will to have land, argues rural sociologist Asser Murutar (1992). The statement describes the political basis of the process at the beginning of national liberation in Latvia and Lithuania as well. In the Baltic states, however, this is true only of the preparation and initial stage of the process. In accordance with prevailing legislation, privatization began with the evaluation of applicants' right of ownership to specific farms. However, even though the applicant may start working the farm, the right of ownership is not confirmed until the third stage of the land reform process. In Estonia there have been a total of 212,000 restitution applications, in Latvia only 112,000, and in Lithuania as many as 460,000 (Maide 1994: 6; World Bank 1993: 93; Kuodys 1993: 10). Distributing land to the applicants has turned out to be much simpler than confirming the right of ownership. The latter will take a long time, which is likely to decrease the motivation of the possessors of the new plots and retard the development of functioning land markets. In every Baltic country the ideological core of the family farm oriented land reform policy is supplemented by a policy of plot farming: old patches are made independent, and new ones are founded. Estonian plot farmers are entitled to claim two hectares of land in the vicinity of the buildings they own. Those who owned land prior to the Soviet occupation (or their heirs) are entitled to receive compensation for the lost property either in the form of money (bonds) or a corresponding landed property elsewhere. The rest of the landed property of the collective farms will be auctioned to the workers (in Lithuania also to retired workers). The instruments of payment consist of the workers' property shares, the value of which is determined by the duration of employment (in Estonia also the quality of work). In Lithuania, however, the Parliament decided to privatize the existing 2 - 3 hectare plots (about 400,000 of them) by distributing them to people who were living in the countryside and breeding livestock (Kuodys 1993: 10). The development of the farm structure is coordinated in the different countries by specific additional conditions. In Estonia the minimum size of the returned farm is ten hectares, but there is no maximum limit. However, a large proportion of the holdings of the former plot farmers and workers of the collective farms will probably be very small farms. In Lithuania, there is a maximum limit to the size of the farms to be returned: 60 hectares for cultivated area and 80 hectares for the whole farm area. In none of the Baltic states is the owner of the restored farm allowed to sell land freely for several

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years after the restitution (cf. Molder 1993). Thus, the new farm structure is temporarily frozen. In the longer term, however, it can develop in very different directions.

3

The Family Farm Ideology and the Historical Conditions for the Rise of the Peasant State

The family farm ideology is the ideology of agricultural petty producers, although it is not restricted to small farming. Its historical roots in Western Europe can be traced back to the first half of the 1800s, when the principles of freedom and ownership were extended to the peasantry (on the German development, see Muth 1957). From one viewpoint the family farm is a fiction (the non-capitalist nature of family labour is emphasized, although the farm type can only exist under conditions of wage work, etc.); from another it represents people's pragmatic relationship to each other, nature and agricultural implements in the form of cultivation traditions, models of the family and inheritance, socialization mechanisms, and so on (Alanen 1991: 9 5 - 1 0 3 ; see also 1992). In Western Europe the family farm ideology was not able to challenge the ideology of large-scale production until the turn of the twentieth century. The challenge was not connected with the serious overproduction crisis of agriculture at the end of the 1800s (see Varga 1968; Hussain and Tribe 1981). It manifested a more basic ideological and institutional change. Especially in Germany the change was also expressed in heated theoretical debate within different political camps, of which the best-known is the discussion within the Social Democratic Party (Engels, Kautsky versus David, Vollmar, Hertz, Bernstein). It is precisely this confrontation to which the term agrarian question refers. The question, of course, was solved in favour of small farming. The change in the hegemonic basis of social morality and the new kinds of institutional arrangements that this solution brought about defined this new developmental stage as a peasant state. In many countries, for example in Finland, the development of the peasant state has been connected with land reforms that have reduced large-scale production. The reforms in themselves, however, do not define an institutional and hegemonic totality of social thought and regulation as a peasant state. The reason for the triumph of the peasant state in Western Europe was purely political (on the less studied background of US developments, see Newby 1980; Havens 1988). The introduction of universal suffrage favoured the numerically large peasantry, but in the parliamentary struggles of Western Europe it owed its strategic position to the power of radical labour movements

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(Hussain, Tribe 1981). It was not the case that the politicians representing different parties and ideologies had been convinced of the arguments underlying the family farm ideology (even in the German Social Democratic Party, Kautsky remained the winner on the level of theory). What happened was rather the outcome of the political logic of parliamentarism. Parties had to compete for the support of peasants, and one way of seeking peasant allegiance was to develop reform programmes for solving the problems of small farming (see Hesselbarth 1968; Lehmann 1970). This is also shown by the fact that in some countries (e.g. in Finland) writings reflecting the petty production ideology were published only after the turn towards the peasant state had already taken place. The emergence of the peasant state as the solution to the agricultural question meant the connection of the advantages of the family farm with the interests of the agribusiness, Parliament and the wider community (Ploeg 1993). The solution thus did not stem from the specific character of agriculture or family farms as various populist movements have tried to prove, but was simply the result of political feasibility. The agricultural policy that in California and in some other southern parts of the USA supported large-scale production testifies to a different path of development. Even dairy farming, which in both Western Europe and the northern and eastern states of the USA has constituted the traditional core of agricultural petty production, has taken on the character of wage work in California (Gilbert, Akor 1988). Neither can the basis of the peasant state be found in industry, which developed a regulation system of its own (Fordism and the welfare state). It can be found in the national systems set up to protect agriculture, systems that from the overproduction crisis of the 1800s onwards were instituted in different countries, first as customs duties and later as price and exports subsidies. At present the regulation of agriculture includes not only the protection of domestic agriculture, but also the maintenance of the physical infrastructure required by small farming (roads, general commercial and welfare services), occupational education and research, the development of agricultural products and production equipment, advising, and the regulation of income, social relations and the environmental effects of agriculture. Samir Amin's term articulated economy (1977) expresses this kind of relationship between agriculture (i.e. the agroindustrial complex) and (other) industry, but due to its economism and analytical rudimentariness his conception is still an inadequate definition of a peasant state. After the Second World War, there have been attempts to reconcile the peasant state and the welfare state. Fordistic regulation refers to a principle of linking the production process and the manner of consumption in such a way that mass production provides the content for the generalization of wage work (Aglietta 1987). In agriculture Fordism has meant the integration of

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family farms vertically (like wage work) to food industry and food trade. The integration permits the application of the principles of mass production to agricultural petty production (Alanen 1991: 124-128; Kenney et al. 1989; Sauer 1990; Marsden 1992). Nevertheless, the separate basis of the peasant state is maintained in the national protection system of petty production, having partially been transformed into regionally differentiated, extensive support systems such as the EU. The ideological and institutional repertoire of the peasant state has lacked a powerful challenger during this century. However, the Western peasant state is not faring well; it has been driven into an increasingly severe crisis. The strains of the regulation on the state have increased, while withdrawal of state support would threaten the entire food system. In addition to the pressures connected with financial policy (overproduction, guaranteeing an adequate income level to the farmers, facilitating the transfer of farm to a descendant), Western agricultural policy has faced the ecological and social problems of petty production. In the course of its development, the system has undergone administrative crises and become increasingly complex. The rapid decline in the agricultural population, the economic pressures on other population sectors, the increasing awareness of the harmful ecological consequences of agriculture, and even the marring of the rural landscape have undermined the political legitimacy of the peasant state (Alanen 1991: 305-306). At the same time the peasant state should be able to respond to totally new challenges, those that emanate from the international integration of primary agricultural production (EU, GATT) and of the (increasingly centralized and transnational) food industry (Alanen 1991, section 4.5). A number of transnational institutions have already been developed to complement and replace the nation-state, van der Ploeg (1993) seems to be right in suggesting that the agrarian question may already be under re-evaluation. This implies a crisis of the family farm ideology and the search for an alternative to the peasant state. All these tendencies undermine the support systems of nation-states and their alliances (EU). Also, Fordism as the basis of the welfare state is being threatened. Because the peasant state has been tightly integrated into it, the dismantling of the welfare state would have a profound effect on the entrepreneurial structure of agriculture. Some researchers, like Berger (1992), have gone so far as to declare the doom of the welfare state. However, the future of both regulation projects is still open. Alternative projects are not yet in sight, and mere demands for the dissolution of regulation do not qualify for such projects (cf. Berger 1992: 11-12).

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4

149

Agricultural Petty Production During the Socialist Period

There is thus the aim of creating an agricultural production structure consisting of technologically developed petty production enterprises in the Baltic states (as in the other post-socialist countries), in other words, a family farm system modelled on the West. Such a system, however, is not the sum of individual production units but a system of farms in their societal, ideological and institutional context. In the West it originated from extensive peasant petty production. In the Baltic states, collectivization interrupted this historical development, although plot farming was numerically common in these countries. The peasant state is still to be constructed, which means that the problem has to be formulated as follows: What has been the effect of the structures and ideological traditions of the socialist period on agricultural petty production in the Baltic states? It is indicative that the family farm system is not the subject of actual theoretical discussion in the post-socialist countries; family farms are simply regarded as natural or normal production units. What kind of developments, then, could ensue from the existing subjective and structural conditions? Comparative studies of rural communities in former Czechoslovakia reveal the importance of cultural orientations to entrepreneurship (Hudeckova 1992a: 1 5 - 1 6 and 1992b: 542; Lostak 1992: 2 0 - 3 0 ) . According to Hudeckova and Lostak (1992b: 122, 125), the maintenance of an individualistic achievement orientation typical of peasant culture is important to the success of family farm policy. In former Czechoslovakia, only 3 to 20 per cent of economically active farmers exhibited this orientation. Experience of private farming increased interest in it, in both former Czechoslovakia (ibid., 123) and East Germany (Krambach 1992: 4 9 - 5 0 ) . In the Hungarian model e c o nomic policy favoured the different forms of private petty production and entrepreneurship also in agriculture, which manifested itself in studies as the emerging entrepreneurial spirit. Although small farming had not been c o l lectivized in Poland to begin with, agricultural enterprises did not function according to market principles (Swain 1993). The agricultural policy pursued did not favour entrepreneurship either, but some bigger farms exhibited the spirit of enterprise (Korlach 1993). Kinship and other cultural traditions seem to be important as well. According to an intensive study, the most tenacious plot farmers in Estonia were those who were children of peasants at the time of the collectivization period, and the founders of the first actual family farms were, generally speaking, previous landowners who had been deported as kulaks to Siberia (Abrahams 1992: 1 3 9 - 1 4 0 ) . The most versatile and systematic data on the power of cultural tradition comes from Hungary. Szelenyi

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(1988) analyses the entire socialist period as a kind of break in bourgeois modernization that is only waiting for a return to the old track, although not in the form of a direct changeover to family farming (Szelenyi, Szelenyi 1991). However, in peasant states the skills of arranging farming and social relations form a much wider repertoire. From this perspective the subjective conditions for family farming prevailing in many post-socialist countries may be even more fragile than could be deduced from the preceding discussion, and entrepreneurial spirit, even in its modest form, characterizes a clear minority of the agricultural population. Even more importantly, however, in so far as the subjective attitudes and skills point in the right direction and are adequate for the development of the cultural repertoire of family farming, its consolidation nonetheless presupposes such external structural conditions that would support it or, minimally, would not prevent the unfolding of this project. The influence of the structures created during the socialist period constitutes a dynamics of its own. During the socialist period, the Baltic states had no farms of the family farm type. In Estonia and Latvia, however, the first family farms were established as early as 1988, that is, during perestroïka (Hanser 1992: 31). The farms that were founded at this early stage had much better economic starting points than those that were founded later: good income, moderately priced production implements and materials (some of which were donated from Finland, Sweden and Germany), good producer prices, and favourable attitudes on the part of collective farms (Abrahams 1992:140; Maide 1994:12). Along with family farms proper, new plots were founded. The new private farmers often maintained quite strong links with the parent collective or state farms (Ash et al. 1992: 59). Thus, these auspicious conditions were based on the structures of the socialist period, for example, on the infrastructure and services provided by collective farms, not to mention the wider societal conditions (the purchasing power of wages, the demand for and prices of agricultural produce, and the moderate prices of agricultural production equipment and different production materials). The example of Hungary shows that a quantitative growth of petty production can actually enhance the effectiveness of the old system, irrespective of the fact that even in Hungary the development got out of hand during the post-socialist transition (as happened in former socialist countries in general; see Acógs, Acógs 1994a; Taganyi 1994; Hann 1993; Mclntyre 1991 and 1993; Swain 1993; Creed 1994). In the Baltic states, the development just exhausted the resources of large-scale farming, with the consequence that the traditional symbiosis between small and large-scale farming crumbled. T o gether with family farms, the bigger plots began to undermine collective farms by diminishing their landed property, utilizing their machinery and services, and weakening the motivation of the workers. At the same time the

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ideological conflict between large-scale and petty production intensified. As a result, some of the collective farms began to hamper the development of small farming and restrict the utilization of collective resources (Abrahams 1992: 140). Also, many workers of collective farms in Estonia (Abrahams 1992) and in former East Germany (Krambach 1992), for instance, became worried about losing the welfare services produced by the collectives. Thus, the fragmentation of collective farms led in the Baltic states even in its initial stage to a paradox: to the weakening of the material and ideological underpinnings of existing small and family farms, and to increasing difficulties in the establishment of new farms. In Estonia the land reform that got off to a good start during perestroïka came to an almost complete standstill in summer 1992. The assessment of real estate prices proved difficult due to the lack of markets, there were difficulties in applying the compensation principle, and in general there were too many interested parties (Maide 1994: 5). Estonia's former Minister of Agriculture Jaan Leetsar said in 1993 that the contradictions of distributing property have been unhappily codified in the agricultural reform. The start-up of the land reform was slowest in Lithuania, but the rapid disintegration of collective farms during 1992 led to an enormous growth of private farms (Frydman et al. 1993: 258), a development that Latvia soon followed. The table below shows the number and average size of the farms of the family farm type that had been founded, de jure, by the end of 1992: Country

Number

Average size (ha)

Arable (ha)

Estonia Latvia Lithuania

8,500 52,300 66,000

25.4 21.2 9

13.4 10.1 7

Sources: Kivistik 1994: 4-6; Maide 1994:10; Agriculture in Latvia, 1994:17-19; Kuodys 1993: 10; Gimius 1994: 4-5.

The number of family farms has grown in all the countries. At the beginning of 1994 a total of 13,000 Estonians, 58,000 Latvians and 130,000 Lithuanians had been granted the right to a family farm. New farms are being founded all the time. For example, in Estonia it is expected that with an ongoing increase of 5,000 farms per annum there will be 75,000 family farms by the year 2000. Their average acreage would be 22 hectares, and they would be able to produce enough foodstuffs to feed the entire population of the country. It would seem then that the family farm project is making rapid progress, although the acreage of the farms is bound to be very small, particularly in Lithuania (Agriculture in Latvia, 1994: 17-19; Girnius 1994: 4-5; Maide

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1994:6; Timmermann 1993:54). However, as will be shown in the following, this progress is illusory. A de jure farm is not necessarily in productive use. In Lithuania, for instance, only 5,200 farms were worked at the end of 1993 (with an average acreage of 17 hectares). At the same time it should be remembered that the distinction between family and plot farms is merely juridical (the majority of the farmers have got their farms on the basis of restitution laws), and quite fluid in economic and cultural terms as well. In Latvian statistics, for example, the median class of family farms, i.e. farms comprising 10 to 20 hectares, accounts for 33 per cent of all family farms but also includes 9 per cent of all plot farms. Similarly, the median class of juridical plot farms covering 5 to 10 hectares includes 34 per cent of all holdings in the group, but also 9 per cent of juridical family farms (Agriculture in Latvia, 1994: 17-19). From a socio-economic point of view, a large proportion of juridical family farms are thus mere plots in terms of acreage, while the largest juridical plots are family farms. Clearly then the statistics tend to exaggerate the agricultural, economic and social significance of the establishment of new family farms. In Estonia, family farms and plots accounted for a surprisingly large proportion of total production, about 40 per cent, as early as 1992. As a result of the increasing number and size of farms, plot farmers possessed at the beginning of 1993 as much as 24 per cent of all cultivated land in Estonia. Although the statistics do not always provide an accurate picture of how much of the production originates in family farms proper, it is safe to say that most of the production comes from small cultivated patches, not from family farms. Similarly, Lithuania's 400,000 plots with 2 - 3 hectares of land continue to be more important than private farms, even though there are also a large number of other plots in the country. Latvian statistics also provide evidence of the importance of plot producers in comparison with family farmers, who produce much less of all kinds of agricultural produce than do plot farmers. The immediate explanation of this tendency in all Baltic states is that some of the applicants and juridical owners of family farms are unable or unwilling to engage in farming. Some expect their children to become farmers, others intend to hire or sell their farms. Therefore a large part of the distributed land will remain uncultivated. Moreover, many researchers believe that a considerable number of the currently worked farms will cease to be run over the next few years (Abrahams 1992:143; Aleksiené 1994:4; Frydman et al. 1993: 258; Girnius 1994: 4-5; Kivistik 1994: 4-6; Pirksts 1994: 9-11; Raig 1993: 22; Statistical Yearbook of Latvia 1993: 204-205; Taljunaite 1993: 10; Tisenkopfs 1994: 3) However, there are no guarantees that even the old plot and small farming that emerged in the socialist period will continue. Even in Hungary, often regarded as the paragon of socialist market economy, extensive plot farming

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was only possible because members of the farming family usually worked outside the farm as well. Mass unemployment and the sharp increase in traffic fares have later undermined this occupation (Toth 1992). In Poland, again, the new dynamic kulak strata generated by the reforms in the late 1980s were the first to experience the shock therapy of real market forces (Swain 1993: 23). A more systematic analysis will reveal what kind of project we are dealing with here.

5

A Short-Term Alternative: A Backward System of Plot Farming

The main types of agricultural enterprise are large- and small-scale farms. This dualism has long characterized the international theoretical discussion on the entrepreneurial structure of agriculture. Some researchers speak of the natural effectiveness of agricultural petty production (the family farm discourse), others analyse the changes in the entrepreneurial structure only from the viewpoint of concentration (the concentration discourse). Elsewhere (1991; 1992) I have argued that both positions are untenable. The future of petty production is open, and its preconditions can only be clarified by means of empirical research. Thus, agricultural petty production declines or revives under specific historical conditions. I will evaluate different alternatives by reference to a typification. On the basis of reproduction type, agricultural petty production can be classified into three main groups, to which two types of large-scale production need to be added. Capitalist agriculture usually includes the following types of enterprise: (1) capital-intensive family farms, (2) semi-proletarian enterprises, (3) marginalized enterprises, and (4) capitalistically organized large farms relying purely on hired labour. In the Baltic and other post-socialist countries large-scale production based on wage labour can be supplemented and replaced by (5) large-scale production owned collectively by the workers in cooperative or other juridical forms (cf. Alanen 1991: 4.4.4.; 1992). (1) Capital-intensive family farms are enterprises fully integrated into the agricultural commodity market. The term also refers to the high economic and technological level of the capital tied to this type of enterprise. The definition excludes capitalist enterprises trying to make a profit by using predominantly external labour force. By contrast, the segment of the petty bourgeoisie that gets extra earnings from non-agricultural occupations b e longs to this category in so far as the reproduction of the family is primarily

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dependent on the agricultural commodity market. The wage-work-dependent segment belongs to the semi-proletariat. It is evident that in the Baltic states the official goal is to construct an entrepreneurial structure composed primarily of capital-intensive family farms. However, in the West the development of this structure as the core of agricultural production took a long time and required massive economic input by the state as well as a complex regulatory system. As already mentioned, the central concern of farmers in former East Germany and Czechoslovakia has been the lack of resources and the weaknesses of state regulation. In no Baltic country will there be major measures to promote this group in the near future, not even in the form of necessary import restrictions. Something has obviously been done, but as in Hungary (Agócs, Agócs 1994b) too little and too late. According to Maide (1994: 12), the re-establishment of a medium-sized farm costs in excess of one million kroons (excluding the price of land) in present-day Estonia, in a situation where agriculture in general is hardly profitable. At the same time, the tax burden is quite heavy at 45 per cent of value added in 1992 (ibid.: 11). To put this into perspective, the average salary in Estonia in January 1994 was 1160 kroons (about 100 DM) (IMF 1994: 43). New family farms are unable to accumulate capital through their own entrepreneurship, as shown by the calculations of Estonian agricultural economist Viktor Jullinen. A c cording to him, the re-establishment of family farms in present-day Estonia " i s based first and foremost on the persistence of the Estonians, their sense of mission, enthusiasm and even fanaticism but not on economic profit. Only a very strong personality and an owner with a good economic intuition can re-establish a farm. The present Estonian family farms are too small for normal living." (Jullinen 1993: 74) Tisenkopfs (1994) argues that 70 per cent of Latvian farms are characterized by inefficiency and marginality. In addition, the production of every fifth farm is channelled primarily to the family's own consumption. Latvian statistics provide startling evidence of the primitive machinery of the country's family farms. Although the number of tractors has increased, they still numbered no more than 38 per cent of the total number of family farms at year-end 1993. The data on individual machines and implements are even more telling. It is hard to imagine any farmer getting by without a plough, yet this seems to be the case with many Latvian farmers: at year-end 1993 there was only one plough per five family farms (and milking machines were even rarer; see Agriculture in Latvia 1 9 9 4 : 1 1 , 1 7 ; Pirksts 1 9 9 4 : 1 0 ) . In Lithuania, the number of all farm animals except horses has decreased, in some cases quite radically (Girnius 1994: 4). The explanation lies neither in the needs of the meat processing industry nor in horse racing, but in traditionally widespread plot farming, which has allowed the horse to maintain its position as the beast of burden on farms. In fact, horses have become increasingly

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important because of the expansion of plot farming, and perhaps because of the steep increase in oil prices. Thus, the evidence available points towards technologically primitive plot farming rather than capital-intensive family farming. Because of Lithuania's plot farming tradition (the Hungarian model) and its stock of suitable work equipment, the country seems to be best placed to maintain reasonable agricultural production volumes by leaning mainly on plot farming. A large, perhaps the largest part of the current family farms are likely to be worked in the same way as traditional plot farms, as there are no cultural or material preconditions for more intensive agriculture. The existing family farms, however, do not constitute a homogeneous mass. At least in Estonia and Latvia the farms that were founded first, i.e. during the years of perestroïka, have an advantage over those established later. However, some of the more recently established small farms exhibit a strong entrepreneurial spirit and resourceful leadership (Abrahams 1992:144-145). In Estonian agriculture there are early signs to be seen of class differentiation, which may produce capital-intensive family farms (ibid.: 146-147). In Latvia 5 per cent of all farms are economically strong and progressive industrial farms; some of these are capital-intensive family farms, while others are clearly capitalistic (Tisenkopfs 1994). In the short term, however, capital-intensive farms are not likely to constitute the backbone of agriculture in any Baltic country. What is more, from the very outset of the process the Baltic republics are subject to the same restrictions that threaten to bring to ruin the peasant states of the West (the opening of agricultural production and food industry to international competition, the challenges of biotechnology, etc.). Therefore not even membership of the European Union, where there is increasing recognition of the need for cutbacks in agricultural subsidies, would save the family farm projects in post-socialist countries. (2) Semi-proletarian enterprises. For family reproduction these small farms depend crucially on off-farm wage work, which defines their basis of reproduction. In advanced capitalist countries semi-proletarian groups probably constitute the largest group of petty producers, and their proportion appears to be increasing. The persistence of this group can be explained by the income gained from wage work. Semi-proletarian farms are typical of agricultural petty production in advanced capitalist countries because the latter provide the kind of labour markets (adequate income level, the necessary employment opportunities) that petty production requires. In the Baltic states, the new farmers' previous, non-agricultural occupations based on a developed division of labour and their relatively high educational level could provide good preconditions for different combinations of wage work and agricultural entrepreneurship. In Estonia, low salaries and the expected mass unemployment in rural areas that already plagues Latvia and Lithuania undermine the reliability of this reproduction model. The off-farm earnings

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of the farmers do not increase the profitability of their farms, and farms that are larger than plot farms also threaten to be marginalized if their owners lose their regular employment. As the former collective farms used to be the most important employers in many parts of the countryside, the marginalization that has already begun is one of the consequences of the dismantling of collective farms (Aleksiené 1994: 2-3, 6-8; Maide 1994: 11; Kivistik 1994: 7)· (3) Marginalized petty producers. This group has little significance in the agricultural produce and labour markets. This marginality defines the reproduction model of the group. In advanced capitalist countries it includes people who have fallen into the poverty trap on account of lack of occupational skills, poor health, inadequate education, unfavourable geographical location, and so on. It also includes so-called multiple-problem families and individuals. It is difficult to estimate the size of this group in advanced capitalist countries. However, the data on the very low income level of some outwardly typical family farms suggest that it may be even larger than the group of capitalistic family farms. According to many empirical studies this type of petty production is numerically dominant in developing countries. In the Baltic states this group consists of old or new plot farmers who have either purchased or hired their patches or acquired them on the basis of pre-socialist ownership rights. A study carried out in former Czechoslovakia found that the only significant positive orientation to petty production was connected with the cultivation of plots (0.5-2 ha), with additional family income as the main goal of farming (Hudeckova, Lostak 1992b: 122). Economic difficulties, the anticipation of mass unemployment and the modest level of social security have led to a dramatic increase in the number of small farms of this kind in the Baltic states. The growth is made possible by the fact that a large part of the population can easily acquire landed property either in connection with privatization or later from the land market. The cultivation of potatoes and other vegetables does not require modern implements or even much skill. Especially in the countryside small-scale and sometimes primitive agricultural production easily becomes an important, even necessary source of income (Aleksiené 1994: 6; Kivistik 1994: 7). This is also evident from the preliminary results of the Baltic-Nordic Project. In the Baltic states people nowadays have several sources of livelihood, of which plot farming is the second most important (and in Lithuania the most important for ten per cent of the population). In Latvia, the quality of nutrition has declined throughout the 1980s. In the lowest income group the calorie intake is 25 per cent below the recommended minimum (Pirksts 1994: 5-7). These figures clearly highlight the need for plot cultivation of foodstuffs. Studies carried out in Hungary (Agócs, Agócs 1994a) and Bulgaria (Creed 1994), for example, indicate that the same situation characterizes other post-socialist

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countries. Does this foreshadow the re-emergence of rural overpopulation, starvation and pauperism that plagued these countries during the last centuries (Swain 1993)? (4) Capitalist large enterprises. This group comprises enterprises whose reproduction model is characterized by hired labour and a profit motive. In the short term the freezing of the markets for landed property will slow down the development of this farm type. (5) Collectively owned large farms. Some collective farms are currently being reorganized but the general tendency is for to be on their way out. Before evaluating the prospects and trends in development of the latter two types of large-scale production, let us return to the dynamics of constructing the peasant state as a prerequisite for family farming.

6

The Preconditions for a New Family Farm Project in the Baltic States

As has been argued earlier, the peasant state in the West was born on the basis of extensive peasant petty production under particular political conditions. Its function was connected with large-scale institutional arrangements and moral patterns. The key question is: is it possible, politically and economically, to turn the Baltic states into modern peasant states in the absence of masses of peasant small farmers and deeply rooted ideological traditions? The most obvious difference from the situation at the turn of the century is that the rural people in post-socialist countries lack the motivation for family farming. Studies carried out in former East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Russia, and elsewhere consistently show that the largest part of the agricultural population have been opposed, from the outset, to the process of substituting small farming for traditional large-scale production (Bergman 1992; Creed 1994; Vavrik 1992: 153; Hudeckova, Lostak 1992a and b; Krambach 1992; Lueschen 1993; Mclntyre 1993; Szelenyi, Szelenyi 1991; Wegren 1992). In Estonia, older workers in particular are opposed to the petty production ideology (Abrahams 1992: 143). According to the preliminary interview data obtained in the Baltic-Nordic Project, there is less ideological resistance in the Baltic states, but at the same time there is not very strong ideological commitment to the project. A minority of the respondents preferred large-scale production over family farming, but the largest group exhibited a pragmatic attitude: let's wait and see which way is more effective. In former Czechoslovakia, the people who are personally interested

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in establishing a family farm are most often town dwellers, whom the country people regard as naive or adventurous (Hudeckova, Lostak 1992b: 123). The reluctance to establish a family farm has pragmatic, interest-based and ideological underpinnings. In former East Germany and Czechoslovakia, a family farmer would lack the necessary material and cognitive resources. The farm that he or she could expect to get would generally not be large enough from the viewpoint of modern technology; the families do not have the financial resources they need to make basic investments (in machinery, buildings, seeds, cattle, etc.); and they lack the cultural knowledge of family farming as well as all the cognitive skills required by farming and entrepreneurship (Bergman 1992; Hudeckova, Lostac 1992a and b). Understandably, people's opinions are affected by their opportunities to get jobs and property. The opposition of some rural people, however, is more deeply ideological. For them, becoming a family farmer would mean giving up the modern life-style of a wage worker, and thereby a step backwards (Bergman 1992; Hudeckova, Lostac 1992a and b). A large proportion of the rural population of former East Germany preferred the communal mode of production of the collective farms to private farms (Krambach 1992: 61-64). However, attitudes of this type are more prevalent in former East Germany and Czechoslovakia than in the Baltic republics. What conclusions can be drawn from what has been said above? First, it seems evident that the family farm project does not enjoy very much support among either the rural or the urban population. It is of course a long-term project to construct a peasant state, but the economic sacrifices it requires are right now — and desperately so. After the fragmentation of collective farms the entire food system, along with the necessary infrastructure, needs to be rebuilt. Only some of the material and cognitive resources of collective farming (machinery, buildings, training) can be integrated as such into the new system. The question of protecting domestic agriculture from foreign competition is particularly difficult. The conditions of agricultural production vary greatly between the Baltic states, but in all of them the prices of agricultural products are artificially low due to chronic overproduction and subsidized exportation of foodstuffs. Moreover, the general wage level is too low to permit farmers to finance the acquisition of machinery, agricultural implements and buildings by extra earnings outside the farm. Therefore the first precondition for the emergence of a peasant state, the protection of domestic agriculture with the aim of facilitating the accumulation of capital for future family farms, is a strategically important task in the Baltic states. Not a single important political party, however, seems to be interested in this goal; family farmers do not make up an important basis of political support. By contrast, everything that raises food prices is politically important, as most people are affected by the price increases. This means that the parties are

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generally uninterested in developing institutional structures to support the family farm system, but very interested in preventing the rise of foodstuffs prices and channelling state resources into the much more attractive alternatives of farms' capital reserves, agricultural instruction, counselling systems, and so on. There are, therefore, no political reasons to expect that the Baltic republics will follow the road taken by Western Europe and North America at the turn of the century. The decollectivization of agriculture does not, at least in the short term, create a new and relatively stable class of family farmers in the post-socialist countries, a class that would be capable of articulating its interests as political demands. Rather, what is being created is a rapidly pauperizing, socially insecure rural population with an uncertain future. Post-socialist countries lack a basis of interests analogous to Western peasant states: a politically and also economically important mass of agricultural family producers. In the former socialist countries the small family farmers are not at the centre of political struggle in any respect. In contrast to the situation at the turn of the century, the current agricultural transformation does not stem from interest-based ideologies at the grass-roots level. Political and cultural elites are trying to impose upon the agricultural population something that most of them are either unwilling or unable to espouse. The primary carrier of the family farm project is the socially very narrow stratum of nationalist intellectuals and new government functionaries from urban backgrounds. For them, collectivization represents one of the greatest crimes of socialism, and the collective farms appear as the last remaining strongholds of communist power, waiting to be crushed (Lieven 1993: 353; Giordano 1993: 12; Stryjan 1992: 147; Creed 1994; Swain 1993: 17-18; Wegren 1994: 230-234). However, if the social power of intellectuals is based on abstract ideology rather than people's concrete interests, it lacks political momentum, and even the ideology itself will remain unstable and vague. Neither in the Baltic states nor in Hungary, Rumania or Bulgaria (Brooks, Meurs 1994: 18) did agriculture become a locomotive that would have pulled the countries back onto the path of modernization. In the Baltic republics the collapse of production has been even faster than that of domestic demand (Girnius 1994), and in Hungary the efforts to export surplus production have been frustrated by exports restrictions and quality regulations based on the underdeveloped food industry and the destruction of the old regulation system. For example, quality control as well as the prevention of plant and animal diseases have collapsed (Agócs, Agócs 1994b). For today's national intelligentsia in the Baltic states, however, "agriculture as a branch of national economy will be moved to the very bottom of the list, as there exists an opinion that we could easily buy agricultural products

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abroad, where they are in excess supply and cheaper than costs in Latvia." (Feiferis 1993: 15) Thus, the family farm project fell into a crisis in country after country even before the process had really begun. Decollectivization destroyed the structural preconditions for a symbiosis of small and large-scale production, and no system of regulating or supporting petty production was created to fill the vacuum. The result was a vicious circle in which the collapse of agricultural production led to a collapse of the rural population's income level, social security and mode of living (Girnius 1994; Maide 1994: 1 0 - 1 2 ; Aleksiené 1994: 6 - 8 ; Agócs, Agócs 1994a; Creed 1994). The policy pursued by nationalist urban intellectuals has led to the political frustration of the rural population. It is revealing that the rural people in Bulgaria refer to decollectivization by the same terminology that was earlier used of the collectivization process. Thus, liquidation committee now refers to a privatization committee (Creed 1994). It is easy for impoverished country people to find a common enemy in cities, intellectuals being the prime candidate (Creed 1993). Thanks to their sheer numbers, the rural people play an important part in parliamentary struggle (cf. Lieven 1993: 348), in the same way as peasants did at the turn of the century. In Lithuania the former communists were able to seize power in this kind of situation (Lieven 1 9 9 3 : 3 5 3 - 3 5 5 ) , and agricultural problems shake governments in Latvia (Bungs 1994). Moreover, in some countries the agricultural population has taken recourse to radical extraparliamentary protests (Lueschen 1993: 35; Creed 1994). In any case, the crisis of the family farm strategy is likely to open up opportunities of totally new kinds of agricultural policies and strategies. Therefore, the outcome of the family farm project may well be surprising.

7

On the Long-Term Prospects

The masses of marginalized plot farmers can create a basis for a disarticulation of the economies of the Baltic states. In this scenario, marginalized farms would constitute a part of the stagnating informal sector utilized by the export-oriented and technologically advanced formal sector. Plot farmers would become a large and flexible reserve of cheap labour force. Since these people would derive part of their livelihood from the plot, they would be able to do other work for a lower wage. In this way the marginalized informal sector would act to lower the general wage level, which again would cut domestic demand. The ownership of a plot farm would thus permit super

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exploitation, to use Claude Meillassoux's (1981) term. The small farm would, then, take on the role of a social-structural element that most neo-Marxist or radical developmental theorists use to explain the subordination of particular countries in the world system (Amin 1977: 21; Wallerstein et al. 1992: 438, 440). Nevertheless, the future of the Baltic states will also depend on the qualitative totality of economic policy and the production structure that is still taking shape. At least in principle the bleak vision of the dependence theorists may be disproved by the modernization of all social sectors (as argued, for example, in Parsons 1961 ; for an evaluation of dependence and modernization theories in connection with the Baltic states, see Alanen 1994). Large-scale agriculture can develop in the Baltic states as a result of domestic or foreign investments. Some of the Latvian industrial farms described by Tisenkopfs are evidently capitalistic. At present foreigners cannot own farmland in any of the Baltic states, but legislation can change. (What is more, there are some roundabout ways. At the time of writing I saw a TV interview of a Finn who had bought an entire kolkhoz in Estonia!) The accumulation of landed property can take place surprisingly quickly even on a domestic basis after the current transition period, when land can again be freely sold and purchased. There is no (longer) overproduction of agricultural produce in the Baltic states, and land and labour will be cheap. The reproduction of large-scale agriculture does not presuppose productivity-increasing investments, as investment in buildings and machinery are not necessarily in the interests of the enterprises over the long term: investments in fixed capital would hamper the withdrawal of capital from the production sector in the case of weakening economic advantages. The former collective farms are also doing their best to adjust their structures to the demands of market economy. Lueschen (1994: 48) assumes that this will succeed in the territory of former East Germany, and expects the farms there to become capitalistic in the process. In the Baltic states, too, new types of large-scale producers are trying to increase production efficiency, which in many cases entails, among other things, dramatic labour cuts (Aleksiené 1994: 7-8; Kivistik 1994: 7). In developing countries the competitive advantages of such farms (latifundia) include an almost unlimited, low-paid workforce that is recruited seasonally from the unofficial sector, mainly from marginalized farms (minifundio). Indeed, Latin America has witnessed the simultaneous centralization of agricultural production and the growth of the numbers of marginalized peasant households (Janvry et al. 1989). In theory, the existence of a large number of plot farmers in the Baltic states would also favour the centralization of agricultural production and a Latin American type of development. Analysing the situation in Hungary, Szelenyi and Szelenyi (1991: 22) assumed before the beginning of privatization proper that large estates would be more

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likely to be proper capitalistic ventures or real cooperatives rather than semifeudal latifundia of the inter-war years. In the light of the chaotic development in Hungary, the prediction can be said to have proven too simplistic, but it could easily be applied to the affluent Germany. There the potential latifundists (or neo-Junkers) do not have at their disposal masses of poor plot farmers, some suffering from disguised unemployment and sometimes even starvation, as is the case in Hungary and the Baltic states. Although the breaking up of collective farms has been the political goal in the Baltic states, the threatening collapse of agricultural production and the gradually increased opposition of the agricultural population to the dissolving of the enterprises has, at least in Estonia, raised the possibility that this enterprise type could also be preserved. According to the preliminary data collected in the Baltic-Nordic Project, most people (both urban and rural) in all Baltic states (especially in Lithuania) either support large-scale production or take a pragmatic (not ideological) view of the choice between petty production and large-scale production, but less than 20 per cent of the population accept the way in which their government is currently handling privatization. Some social scientists agree with Antanas Poviliunas (1993: 23) that agricultural enterprises established on a cooperative basis should not bear an interim character. In the Baltic states, destruction and fragmentation of collectively-owned large farms stem not only from official policies but also from misconduct and downright exploitation; on the farms themselves, however, one can also see tenacious efforts to adapt to the new conditions (Aleksiené 1994: 4-5, 7 - 8 ; Maide 1994:12). A lot depends on what kind of and how powerful ideological projects will emerge in the different countries. Today the Baltic states are characterized by political alienation (cf. Abrahams 1992: 146), partly because of the fact that the articulation of grass-roots interests into political programmes and social movements will take time. However, Estonian small farmers are active in local government and in their interest organizations (ibid.: 145-147). Does this augur the political formation of the family farm project and the emergence of the political preconditions for the Western model? To my mind, in the Baltic republics as in other post-socialist countries there may rather be a social need for a totally new type of societal project, one that includes such ideological and material elements that are derived from the socialist period. This is because a large part of the agricultural population has been able to learn the life-style of the wage worker under the institutional arrangements and welfare services organized by collective farms. For them, the move to small farming would mean a backward step, and for many it would not be possible even in principle because of age, the nature of the privatization process, and so on. Nevertheless, the preliminary data of the Baltic Nordic

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Project show that, with the exception of Lithuania, the entire agricultural population would be ready to give up Soviet-type collective farming. In the Baltic states as well as in Hungary, Bulgaria and former East Germany, for example, people started immediately after the privatization of collective farms to establish new cooperatives and collectively-owned large farms based on other juridical forms, and these continue to function alongside private farms. However, the transition from command economy to market economy requires the internal reorganization of large enterprises controlled by the workers. The farms have had to adapt to market conditions, and people are dissatisfied with the old way of organizing farming on the collectives. In Lithuania new ways of organizing collective farms were intensely debated before independence (Poviliunas 1993: 22), and in Estonia some agricultural cooperatives were reorganized on a new basis during the same period (Abrahams 1992). Enterprises of this kind could utilize and build on the existing, relatively developed production equipment as well as occupationally specialized and trained workers. This reproduction model can be assumed to differ in principle from large-scale production that is based solely on the use of wage labour, as the production strategies of the enterprise will have to treat the workers as owners. This reproduction type allows part of the industrial functions and service activities to remain internal to the enterprise, although these often take the form of outward-oriented, economic functions. However, after years of independence such restructuring efforts were banned (Poviliunas 1993: 22). These kinds of enterprises can have many alternative strategies of development, but an analysis of these alternatives would require systematic empirical research. Already the wide range of enterprise types would provide excellent data for a comparison of the new experiences with earlier experiences of collective farms or the Israeli kibbutz system, for example. Such research would be relevant not only for attempts to solve the huge problems of the post-socialist countries, but it might also help the West find alternatives to the crumbling family farm system. At the moment it is impossible to evaluate the real ideological and political chances of such a new type of cooperative farming project in which private farming would not be favoured as it is now at the expense of collective farming. While the material conditions for collective large-scale production have weakened, its ideological support among the population may even have increased. It is possible that a system based on collective ownership could turn out to be a more satisfactory option than a backward plot farming system, to which the action of political and cultural elites now seems to be leading.

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References Abrahams, Ray, The Emergence of New Family Farmers: The Countryside of Estonia in Transition, in: Lane, D. (ed.), Russia in Flux. The Political and Social Consequences of Reform, Edward Elgal, London 1992. Agócs, Peter, Agócs, Sándor, The Change Was But An Unfulfilled Promise, Agriculture and the Rural Population in Post-Communist Hungary, East Eurpoean Politics and Societies, 1994, Vol. 8, No. 1 (a). Agócs, Peter, Agócs, Sándor, Too Little, Too Late: The Agricultural Policy of Hungary's PostCommunist Government, Journal of Rural Studies, 1994, Vol. 10, No. 2 (b). Aglietto, Michel, vi theory of capitalist regulation. The US experience, Verso, London 1987. Agricultural Policy and Trade Developments in Estonia in 1993-1994. Paper for Ad Hoc Group of Experts on East/West Economic Relations in Agriculture, Paris, 12-15 September 1994. Agriculture in Latvia, 1990-1993. A Collection of Statistical Data, State Committee for Statistics of the Republic of Latvia, Riga 1994. Alanen, Ilkka, The Family Farm Ideology, the Baltic Countries, and Theories of Development, Eastern European Countryside, 1994, Vol. 1, No. 1. Alanen, Ilkka, Agricultural Petty Production and the Rise of Capitalist Agriculture in the Baltic Countries, in: Alanen, I. (ed.), The Baltic States at a Crossroads. Preliminary Methodological Analyses, Publications of the Department of Sociology, University of Jyväskylä 1993. Alanen, Ilkka, On The Conceptualization of Petty Production in Agriculture, paper presented at the World Congress for Rural Sociology at the Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania, USA, on 11-16 August 1992. Alanen, Ilkka, Miten teoretisoida maatalouden pientuotantoa, Jyväskylä Studies in Education, Psychology and Social Research, No. 81, Jyväskylän yliopisto, Jyväskylä 1991. Aleksiené, Α., Rural Employment: Problems and Prospects, Report transmitted by the Government of Lithuania, FAO/ECE Working Party on the Economics of the Agri-Food Sector and Farm Management, Committee on Agriculture (Third Session, Helsinki, 12-16 September 1994), Economic Commission for Europe, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Helsinki 12-16 September 1994. Amin, Samir, Imperialism and unequal development, Essays by Samir Amin, Harvester Press, Sussex 1977. Ash, Timothy N., Lewis, Robert, Skaldina, Tanya, Russia Sets the Pace of Agricultural Reform, RFE/RL Research Report 1992, Vol. 1, No. 25. Berger, Johannes, After the victory of the west: theories of modernization revised, paper presented to the conference of the American Sociological Association, Pittsburgh, August 20-24,1992. Bergman, Theodor, The re-privatization of farming in Eastern Germany, Sociologia Ruralis, 1992, Vol. XXXII, No. 2/3. Brooks, Karen, Meurs, Mieke, Romanian Land Reform: 1991-1993, Comparative Economic Studies, 1994, Vol. 36, No. 2. Bungs, Dzintra, Latvian Government Resigns, RFE/RL Research Report, 1994, Vol. 3, No. 30. Creed, Gerald W., An Old Song in a New Voice: Decollectivization in Bulgaria, in: Kideckel, David (ed.), East-Central European Communities: The Struggle for Balance in Turbulent Times, Westview, Boulder 1994. Creed, Gerald W., Rural-Urban Oppositions in the Bulgarian Political Transition, Südosteuropa, 1993, Vol. 42, No. 6. Feiferis, Inesis, The Principles of Agrarian Policy in Latvia. Searching for Our Own Way, in: Agricultural Development Problems and Possibilities in Baltic Countries in the Future, Finnish-Baltic Joint Seminar, Saku, Estonia 1993. MTTL—Maatalouden taloudellinen tutkimuslaitos (Agricultural Economics Research Institute, Finland), julkaisuja (Research Publications) 72.

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Women and Rural Development in Contemporary Estonia Ray Abrahams

A great deal has been written in recent years concerning the role and changing status of women in the context of rural development, and especially in the countries of the so-called Third World. There, attention has been paid to the impact of the wider economy upon rural women (cf. Boserup 1970, Ch.3 and passim; Murray 1981) and to special burdens which they bear in times of stress (Sen 1983; Vaughan 1987). Scholars have also noted the failure of development agencies properly to appreciate the role of women in different spheres of agricultural activity (cf. Swantz 1985; Nelson 1979). The transformations in the former eastern bloc of countries from "socialist" towards new forms of rural economic structure and organization also have serious implications for women and depend heavily upon women's contributions to their progress. Although a considerable amount is known about the status of women under socialism (cf. Bridger 1987), very little detailed information is available about the current situation, and one aim of the present paper is to contribute to the filling of that gap by setting out some of the main ways in which women are participating in and are affected by these new developments in rural Estonia. The paper chiefly draws upon material which I collected during two summers of fieldwork in two areas of the country, Vörumaa in the south-east and the large island of Saaremaa in the west. 1 My work was mainly focused on the emergence of new family farms, and I largely concentrate on the involvement of women in this process in my discussion. 2 The case material with which I illustrate some of the main features of the situation may also serve to complement some of the more abstract analyses which others such as Alanen and Leiulsfrud and Sohlberg have provided in the present volume. Such a combination of the "abstract" and the "concrete" is especially valuable in the study of rural life, and family farming in particular, in the new post-socialist states. It is a commonplace that most mainstream modern social theory is geared to understanding the development

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of capitalist industrial society. Leaving aside the question of the transferability of such theory to the understanding of former socialist societies and their current transformations, which several contributors to this volume interestingly raise, there is the further fact that rural social systems, if not totally ignored in such theory, are often dismissed as mere marginal backwaters of outdated Gemeinschaft tradition or are, in contrast, simply assumed to fit the general patterns of mainstream society. Neither assumption is, however, justified. The case of family farming, as a highly persistent feature of economic life in many different social systems, is extremely pertinent in this context (cf. Alanen 1991:316 and passim). It is possible, as Blom, Melin and Nikula and also Alanen do in their papers, to question the rationality of the attempt to re-establish family farming in the Baltic area, and I myself have expressed my own doubts on this issue in a number of publications (cf. Abrahams 1994). But it is mistaken to assume simply that this attempt stems from no more than a "political decision", or that those who try to set up such farms for themselves are simply irrational. Contemporary family farmers are full-scale active participants in the wider modern world, rather than village romantics living purely in the past. The farm and the farmer and his or her family constitute a meeting point of many different vectors, both structural and personal. Demographic patterns, laws of property and inheritance, national and global economic forces, all affect their behaviour. But so too do community and family values; and the peculiar combinations of land, family, home and workplace which typify their activities endow farmers' strategies and tactics and their life more generally with a special flavour and, to some degree, a rationality of its own, different from that of the urban factory worker or civil servant. From the farming family's point of view, the farm tends to constitute a venture in which, in the terms of Marx's dictum, men (and also women) sometimes really can make their own history, even if not in conditions simply of their own making. The case material provided in this paper will, 1 hope, help to illustrate some of the ways in which these processes of individual human action and decision-making in a complex structural setting operate for villagers in general and for rural women in particular.

1

The Background

Estonia is a small country covering about 45,000 square kilometres, with a population of about 1.5 million of whom about 30 per cent are rural based. In

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contrast to the urban situation, where there are many Russians, almost all the rural population is Estonian. Estonian peasants emerged from rural serfdom under German barons in the early nineteenth century. They developed a keen interest in acquiring their own farms, and family farming reached its peak during the country's first period of independence between the two world wars. In 1939 there were approximately 140,000 such farms. The second world war and subsequent Russian rule seriously disrupted rural life. In 1949, resistance to Soviet demands for collectivisation broke down when several thousand "kulaks" and their families were in one fell swoop deported to Siberia. A variety of collective and state farms were established in the following decades. Family-based agricultural activity persisted to some extent, however, on the small private plots which were allocated to farm workers, and glasnost and perestroïka in the late 1980s led to the re-emergence of some larger family farms. Estonia became independent once again in 1991, and the present government is committed to the restitution of collectivized property (either in itself or through compensation) and to the privatization of agriculture through the re-establishment of family farms or other forms of private enterprise such as co-operatives and joint stock companies. By January 1993, about 8,600 new farms had been registered, and many more were said to be in the process of establishment. Women have been involved in these new developments in a variety of ways. A few of them are actually running new farms themselves, with help from others, and many others are actively engaged in such ventures with their husbands. A family's access to the land for a new farm has also often depended upon connections to and through women. In addition, money and other material inputs are also sometimes provided as a valuable supplement to farm earnings through a woman member of the family. Lastly, women are also playing an important role — along with men — in some of the transformations of previous socialist economic and political institutions into new co-operative and other larger-scale establishments.

2

Women as Farmers and Farm Wives

The English word "farmer" has a number of translations in Estonian. Some, like English "farmer" itself, are not gender-specific though their reference is usually assumed to be to a man. There is also a term, peremees (literally "man of the family"), which explicitly attributes gender to the concept of a farmer, and this is complemented by the termperenaine meaning "woman of the family" or "farm wife".

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Statistically, such gender definition makes good sense — the large majority of registered farmers are males — but the situation is more complicated than a literal translation of these terms suggests. Some registered farmers are women, even though they may have husbands or male partners, and such women are themselves sometimes described as peremees. Nor is there much sign of humour when the term is used for them, and the word's literal gender-specificity seems relatively insignificant in such contexts.3 The term perenaine is not, however, typically applied to their husbands. I encountered a small number of such women in the course of my research. They appear to have encountered no special problems in their relations with male farmers, and there were no suggestions from these that being a woman made them any less a farmer. They ran their farms and negotiated with others in much the same way as their male counterparts. Those I interviewed had a husband or other male "partner", but such men were typically ill, or unreliable, or in one case simply rather shy. The following case is worth recording in some detail because it involves other women in addition to the "farmer" herself. The farm is on Saaremaa and was on the territory of a collective farm. It is registered in the name of L.S., a woman in her mid-fifties. She was born on the place and it had originally belonged to her mother's father's father. L.S.'s mother was never married, and L.S. is her only child. I was told that the mother has had problems with her legs since childhood, making it difficult for her to do heavy work, and this meant it was hard for her to become a farmer's wife. Nonetheless, she decided she would like a child of her own, and as I was told, "she went and had one". She was 80 in 1991 and lives on the farm. She is a keen landscape painter in her spare time. L.S. herself is married. Her husband O.S. is also in his mid-fifties and lives on the farm. He and L.S. were away fishing when I first visited the place, and in his absence L.S.'s mother told me that he does not go to work off the farm but is simply "waiting for his pension". They have three sons and a daughter. Until 1986, L.S. was a tractor driver on the collective farm, but she became ill and gave up the work. She described her own and her husband's education as seven years in school followed by "the university of life". In addition to driving tractors, she knows how to maintain and repair them. Her eldest son was working in a building co-operative as a driver, but he and his wife and daughter were staying on the farm when I visited it. The second son was a driver on the collective farm, and the youngest son, in his early twenties, was living and working on the farm. He was divorced from his first wife, and his new fiancee was staying with him on the farm. The daughter lives with her husband in a flat at the collective farm centre, and is at present rather tied to her young children.

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The main work force is L.S. herself and her husband and the boys, while mother helps with housework and cooking. All the children get together to help if there is some bigger piece of work to do. The eldest son is keen on farming despite his work with the co-operative, and he helps out as much as possible. He is a member of the farmer's union. L.S. herself clearly takes a very active role in discussing plans and making applications, and it appears that she and her eldest son are currently the central figures, while at the same time everyone does what they can to help. The youngest son clearly contributes a great deal and seems likely to play a more assertive role as he gets older. The patterns of female independence, control and equality in this and similar cases seem likely to derive to some degree from the experience of the Soviet system. At the same time there is possibly a complicating factor in the situation which is not easy to evaluate. Most, though not all, women farmers I encountered were on Saaremaa, and the long history of male labour migration and sea-faring from the island is often said to have left the women there more deeply involved in agriculture and more independent than on the mainland. An old proverb, recorded it seems only from the islands, asserts that a woman who cannot feed or support two children and a husband is no real woman. 4 More detailed research would be needed in order to try to separate the different strands of historical and contemporary influence involved in such cases, but I am tempted to think that they partly represent a more general pattern of agrarian society in European "maritime communities". There is a wide spectrum of contributions which wives make to farm families, and the kinds of cases discussed above shade fairly imperceptibly into others as part of a continuum. Many women are more or less equal partners with their husbands in farm labour input, and the balance between them can of course change easily in accordance with a variety of circumstances, including life-course developments of pregnancy, child-rearing, ageing and sickness. Again, changes in the development of farming activities themselves can be important. The farm where I stayed in Vorumaa is interesting in this last respect, and also in the way in which it demonstrates the complex involvement of some farmers in both the local and wider economy and society. In 1991, the farmer M.S. and his wife ran the farm as a dairy farm, but M.S. himself kept up a wide range of pluri-activity. He had good contacts with factories in Russia, and arranged deals to supply food to these from the collective farm and some local farmers. He was an active member of the farmers' union, and through this he helped to organize supplies of second-hand machinery from Sweden for himself and other new farmers. He had also recently stood, unsuccessfully, as a local parliamentary candidate. As I discuss below, he received some support in farming and outside it from two brothers-in-law, but his wife —

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and in the summer his two daughters from a previous marriage — also helped a great deal. Much of the milking and other tiring work was carried out by the wife during his common absences, while he himself worked very hard to bring additional income and other inputs into the farm. By 1992, when I revisited them, the pattern had considerably changed. They had increased the dairy herd, and were also more concerned with developing farm buildings. He had largely given up active connection with the farmers' union, though he was involved in setting up a local association of more productive farmers. Meanwhile his sister's husband, who had worked for him, had left to join his wife, and the elder of the two daughters had left home. The couple were now working extremely hard as a pair, rising daily at 5.30 am and keeping very long hours. To some extent, it appeared that they had been trapped into the demands of more intensive dairy farming, with rising production costs, uncertain payments from the dairy and only moderately developed technology, and although they were aware of this they felt it would be dangerous to cut back the size of their herd. The main point in the present context, however, is that the couple had become, at least for the time being, much more of a farm-based working team. This balance has since changed once again as he has opened a farm produce shop and begun to engage in other forms of trading in a nearby small town. Farms where the husband has off-farm activities and relies on his wife to keep things going while he is away are quite common. Some farm wives may also provide other sources of income than those arising directly from farm work. In another Vörumaa farm, the husband was chief engineer on the local collective farm and his wife was working as a school teacher. They were living in his parents' former farm house, and by 1991 they had acquired back some of the former farm land, but as yet had no dairy herd. They were the farm's sole labour force — apart from their seven-year old daughter as they jokingly asserted — and he was feeling the strain of trying to combine his job with farming. Because of this, and because of the uncertain future of the collective farm and his wish in any case to get more land, he was planning to become a full-time farmer. His wife, however, was keen to maintain her teaching job, even if they got a dairy herd. She enjoyed teaching and did not wish to spend all her time at home. When I revisited them in 1992 their work situation was still much the same, despite the acquisition of more land and a couple of milk cows. Of course, not all farm couples are harmonious hard working teams, and the demands of farming seem likely to put extra strain on some relationships. Nonetheless, I was in general much impressed by the enthusiasm and mutual commitment of many farming couples whom I studied, and it seemed clear that this was being reinforced by their excitement at the dawning of a new post-Soviet age. In such families, husband and wife each contributed as best

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they could, and this varied according to their skills and circumstances and the opportunities for combining o n - and off-farm income which presented themselves to them. In one case the husband spent most of the year alone, putting his former family farmhouse into good repair, and getting the farm started. His wife worked as a full-time journalist in Tallinn, but was deeply committed to the farm and was very interested in farming more generally and in agrarian politics which she covered for a national newspaper. During her summer break she returned to the farm to help out. At the same time, as this last case hints, men alone can also sometimes manage a farm, though they may seriously miss female companionship and domestic skills.

3

Connections

A Soviet joke used to tell how execution was to be replaced by a harsher penalty of fifteen years without connections. In contemporary Estonia also, personal access to information and material resources remains vital. Although such connections are often between male kin, friends and acquaintances, it is clear that links to and through women can also be important. In the rural areas, this is especially true with regard to access to land. In Vörumaa, the farm on which I lived was reputedly the first new family farm in Estonia. The farmer had been given 20 hectares by the collective farm, on which he worked as a buildings officer, and this land lay around the farm house which he and his family occupied. He was not from Vörumaa himself, but his wife was a local woman, and it was through her that he had originally heard about the possibility of purchasing the farm house, which her mother had seen advertised locally. This purchase was a vital step towards the acquisition of land and the dairy farm which he and his wife now run. In addition, his wife's brother is an important helper in the farmer's many off-farm business activities, while his sister's husband also worked for him as a labourer in 1991. Women may also bring land to a farm by virtue of ownership and/or inheritance rights to farm houses and fields. In its most general form, of daughter/son-in-law inheritance, this is an old pattern both in Estonia and in Finland (cf. Abrahams, 1991:128-37), and it is not unusual today. A further pattern also seems to be emerging in contemporary Estonia. As elsewhere, many older women outlive their men folk, and some of these are left as owners of farm houses. In some cases, they may have sons or other younger relatives to whom they can leave property, but this is not always so, and in any case such sons may not wish to farm. One such woman was in her eighties, and

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was ill and blind. She lived in a ramshackle old village house with another woman who was in her seventies and quite active. The older woman was the owner. She had been married and then widowed, and she had a daughter who had died. The younger woman had originally been a servant and had never married. They had arranged for any money they might leave to pass to a neighbouring family to arrange their funerals. Relations with this family were in general very positive, and the older woman had become increasingly dependent on their help as she aged. She had made a will, leaving her farm house and attached rights to land to their young teenage son. This should make a significant difference to the family who were keen to farm but whose own holdings had originally been rather small. The woman's farm had been a substantial one in pre-Soviet days, and the family had escaped deportation to Siberia because their house was in bad condition, owing to the farmer's stinginess, and they seemed poorer than they were. In another case, an ageing childless widow had invited a young man and his wife to come and look after her village home when her health began to fail some years ago. The place had belonged to her second husband, but it was already collectivized when she moved there. The young man is a distant relative of her second husband, and she has known him since he was a baby. He was one of several children in his family, whereas she had none, and this follows a long-standing pattern in the area of "borrowing" children from large families. She has not transferred the property to him or made a will in his favour, since she worries that things may go wrong and relations become awkward in the future. It has been clearly understood, however, that everything, including rights to land, would pass to him in due course. I interviewed the members of this household in 1991 and again in 1992, by which time the man's wife — a 25 year old city girl with whom he has two children — had left him, having found it hard to adjust to full-time rural life. This of course makes it more difficult for him to manage the farm. I also encountered one case of connections of a somewhat different kind in which a woman from rural Saaremaa had established a relationship which helped to raise the living standards of a family farm. The woman was the step-daughter of a local farmer who was married to her mother. She had been working as a show-girl in Tallinn where she acquired a Finnish boyfriend. She does no farm work when she visits the farm, but she has persuaded her boyfriend to provide a range of household equipment and a couple of old vehicles for her mother and step-father. The farmer responded to my questions about such aid with the caustic comment "Soomlane on kasulikum kui lehm" — "A Finn's more useful than a cow! ". Once again, it is hard to know how widespread cases of this sort might be. Some Finnish men advertise in Estonian papers for Estonian women pen- and girlfriends, and many Estonian women make shorter or longer trips to seek work in Helsinki, where wages

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and living standards generally are rather higher than in Tallinn. I suspect that while this particular case is not unique, it is nonetheless one of a relatively small number of a broadly similar genre in which the different strands of personal affection, sexual attraction, and economic advantage are complexly intertwined in ways which are often difficult to disentangle.5

4

Losers

Not all older women in the rural areas are as fortunate as some of those I have described. In the small area where I stayed on Saaremaa there were four older women in their eighties living on their own in 1991 and receiving a small pension from the state. Two people were paid by the village soviet to visit them regularly and do shopping for them, and I accompanied one of these on her rounds. Most of the women lived in rather dilapidated accommodation, though their cheeriness in the circumstances was remarkable. All of them seem to be childless. It was clear that they were rather lonely, and they were very keen to talk. They mostly had radios, and a couple had dogs. The visitor bought weekly supplies for them. By late summer 1991, the price of goods had escalated sharply, so that it became impossible for them to buy meat with their pensions, and the situation had become more difficult by 1992. The future looks extremely gloomy for such women, and indeed for older men and women generally, even though they may continue to receive some neighbourly help. I am told for instance that some older people, who used to be given help with their small gardens and plots by state farm tractor drivers, are now unable to afford this service from the new co-operative and joint stock company which have been formed from the remains of the state farm. Some of them have been allotted nominal shares in such companies, as recompense for property incorporated into, and work done on the farm, but these shares are soon eaten up as they are surrendered, in lieu of money, for tractor and other services. Women are especially vulnerable in such circumstances since there are far more widows and other older women living alone than men. Another group of women who seem likely to suffer badly are those whom current restructuring leaves unemployed. Some such women were agricultural workers while others worked as clerical assistants and secretaries in the previous farm and village soviet bureaucracy. It seems clear that rather less such workers will be needed, or indeed can be afforded, and many of them have neither the opportunity nor wish to farm for themselves, nor much

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chance of finding other local jobs. Their future outlook seems bleak unless they can move to towns and find work there.

5

Conclusion

It will, I hope, be clear that many women are playing an important role in the re-development of family farming in Estonia, and that it would be quite mistaken to think of farming as a wholly or even predominantly male activity. Women are involved in agriculture at a variety of levels including planning and decision-making in addition to farm work itself. At the same time, it would clearly be mistaken to consider the position of such women as unproblematic. In the first place, as implied above, the future viability of many family farms is quite uncertain in the current economic climate, and this will create serious difficulties for both men and women who are involved in starting them. Moreover, family farming may also create some special problems for women. One of these was hinted at earlier in my discussion of the farm wife who was intent on maintaining her work as a teacher. In general, farm women seem more tied to the farm than men who tend to spend more time in the wider off-farm world, and this may lead to a depressing sense of isolation. The situation varies individually and locally, depending among other things on how close neighbours live. It is also possible, as in Finland, that improved telephone connections and the establishment of local women's groups may help in due course to alleviate the problem. On the other hand, many farm women with whom I discussed this matter seemed not to worry at the moment, and simply commented that they had little time for anything but work in any case. It may be noted in this context that some writers on Soviet Estonia, as elsewhere, have described how — despite socialist hopes and expectations — working women have often carried an unequal double burden of waged work combined with housework, child-rearing, and long queues shopping for scarce goods. 6 This problem still persists beyond the socialist period especially for many urban women, who are all the more disappointed because they have been led to hope that the collapse of socialism would bring them a life of domestic leisure. The model seems less apt, however, at least for the new farming sector, in the rural areas. This is not to suggest that Estonian men involved in family farming now typically carry a share of women's traditional domestic tasks, or that they are all hard working, relatively sober individuals, though many of them are. It is, however, arguable that the re-incorporation

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of many women away from the waged labour force of the collective and state sector and back into the domestic world of the family farm, has diluted rather than increased the difference between male and female burdens. The work place, for both men and women, is now to a much larger extent the home, so that the spatial and temporal separation of "productive and reproductive tasks" (Moore 1988: 142) and the devaluation of home-based work are diminished. The new situation still requires long hours of heavy work, but in many families I have studied, rural men and women operate together as a team and are both subject to such demands. For the present, moreover, the difficulties they endure are mitigated by their commitment to each other and by their sense of achieving something lasting in a place of their own.

Notes 1

2

3

4 5

6

This research was sponsored by ESRC as part of its East-West Comparative Research Initiative. I am grateful for help from the Estonian Academy of Sciences, and especially Professors J. Kahk and A. Park, and I am also much indebted to G. Grimberg, M. Haab, E. Kuusman, M. Ligi, T. Pehk, M. Saldré and many others in Tallinn and in the two rural areas where I worked. I am aware that, even with some additional material which 1 provide, this gives only a very partial picture of women's situation and experience in the contemporary Estonian countryside. As I note in the paper, some collective and state farms have also partly been transformed into co-operatives and limited companies. I have relatively little information on these and on women workers in them, some of whom may be in a worse situation than before. At the same time, it is clear that a few women are also involved at managerial level in at least some such developments, and also in the new local government institutions which have replaced the old "village soviets". For a more general picture of developments, based on my 1991 work, see Abrahams (1992). This usage follows the gender-free defmition of the term, despite its literal meaning, in the 1989 Farm Law (Section I, Para. 4) under which most new farms had been established at the time of my research. I am grateful to Professor J. Kahk for information on this proverb and related matters. In addition to more complex longer term relations, it is not of course unknown in eastern Europe as elsewhere for the physical attractions of women to be used to their own and/or others ' material advantage. It is hard to say how widespread this phenomenon might be in Estonia outside the capital Tallinn, where sex tourism from Finland and elsewhere is said to be quite common, and I neither heard nor saw anything of it in the areas where I worked. However, in a recent scandal in Kuressaare, the main town of Saaremaa (cf. Baltic Independent June 25 - July 5,1993: 5) a local politician was accused of providing women's " intimate services" for tourists through his local government telephone number, and this suggests that sex and tourism may spread together more widely in the future if "market forces" are allowed to dominate. Cf. Haavio-Mannila and Rannik (1987: 368) and Pine (1992: 57ff.). For a concise general discussion of this problem in socialist societies see Moore (1988:142ff.).

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References Abrahams, R-,Λ Piace of Their Own, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1991. Abrahams, R., The emergence of new family farmers: the countryside of Estonia in transition, in: Lane, D. (ed.), Russia in Flux, p. 133-148, Edward Elgar, Aldershot 1992. Abrahams, R., The regeneration of family farming in Estonia, Sociologia Ruralis, 1994, XXIV, 4, p. 354-368. Alanen, I., Miten teoretisoida maatalouden pientuotantoa (On the conceptualization of petty production in agriculture), Jyväskylä University, Jyväskylä 1991. Boserup, E., Women and Rural Development, George Allen and Unwin, London 1970. Bridger, S., Women in the Soviet countryside: women's role in rural development in the Soviet Union, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1987. Haavio-Mannila, E., Rannik, E., Family life in Estonia and Finland, Acta Sociologica, 1987, 30, 3/4, p. 355-369. Moore, H., Feminism and Anthropology, Polity Press, Cambridge 1988. Murray, C., Families Divided: The Impact of Migration Labour in Lesotho, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1981. Nelson, N., Why Has Development Neglected Rural Women? A Review of the South Asian Literature, Pergamon Press, New York 1979. Pine, F., Uneven Burdens: Women in Rural Poland, in: Rai, S., Pilkington, H., Phizacklea, A. (eds.), Women in the Face of Change, p. 57-75, Routledge, London 1992. Sen, A.K., The battle to get food, New Society, 3/10/1983, p. 54-57. Swantz, M-L., Women in Development: a Creative Role Denied?, Hurst, London 1985. Vaughan, M., The Story of an African Famine: Gender and Famine in Twentieth-century Malawi, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1987.

Notes on Contributors

Ray Abrahams, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, Department of Anthropology, Cambridge, United Kingdom. Publications: Political Organization of Unyamwezi (1971), A place of their own — family farming in Eastern Finland (1991). Ilkka Alanen, Senior Research Fellow, University of Jyväskylä, Department of Sociology, Jyväskylä, Finland. Publications: On the conceptualization of petty production in agriculture, Jyväskylä 1991. Raimo Blom, Professor of Sociology, University of Tampere, Department of Sociology and Social Psychology, Tampere, Finland. Publications: Scope Logic of Class Analysis (co-author), Avebury 1992. Diverging Patterns of Change (editor), Tampere 1991. Michail Chernish, Research Fellow, Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Sociology, Moscow, Russia. Publications: Dr. Chernish has published widely on various aspects of social mobility in Russia. Leonid Gordon, Professor of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia. Publications: Professor Gordon has published numerous books and articles on the social structure of the former Soviet Union and the position of the working class in socialism. Hâkon Leiulfsrud, Assistant Professor, University of Trondheim, Department of Sociology, Trondheim, Norway. Publications: Det familjära klassamhället: en teoretisk och empirisk Studie av blandklassfamiljer (The familiar class society: a theoretical and empirical study on cross-class families), Lund 1991.

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Harri Melin, Assistant Professor, University of Tampere, Department of Sociology and Social Psychology, Tampere, Finland. Publications: Assistant Professor Melin's earlier publications concentrate mainly on issues of post-socialism and social stratification. Jouko Nikula, Assistant Professor, University of Tampere, Department of Sociology and Social Psychology, Tampere, Finland. Publications: Assistant Professor Nikula focuses in his earlier work of postsocialism and social stratification. Rein Ruutsoo, Senior Research Fellow, Estonian Academy of Sciences, Tallinn, Estonia. Publications: Rein Ruutsoo has published extensively on a wide range of issues touching upon civil society. Peter Sohlberg, Lecturer, Department of Sociology, University of Uppsala, Sweden. Publications: Peter Sohlberg specializes in methodological issues of the social sciences. Meilute Taljunaite, Vice Director of the Institute of Philosophy, Sociology and Law, Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, Vilnius, Lithuania. Publications: Dr. Taljunaite's earlier publications include a number of articles on social and occupational structure in Lithuania.