![]() “Latvia has almost no effective job protection and only the weakest trade unions are in favour of decent working conditions and wages (and sometimes even only wages),” we are told. taxes were lowered and numerous allowances for Western capital were applied). Austerity was imposed and the economy was deregulated (i.e. the creation of a new, capitalist Latvian state after the collapse of the USSR – Latvia is an example of a real tragedy. 8 out of 10 landowners in Latvia are foreign companies – mostly Swedish, Norwegian, American.įrom the point of view of the political “transformation” – i.e. Today, 30 years later, this structure has changed, but it follows the principle of capital accumulation. However, they did not distribute the land to peasants, or employees of these state-owned farms – they gave the land to the former landowners or their descendants. Currently in opposition the Union of Greens and Farmers in the 1990s dealt primarily with the privatisation of land (liquidation of post-Soviet state-owned farms). ![]() The currently ruling Unity, a party of Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš, is extremely pro-NATO and pro-EU. Distribution of the Russian-speaking minority in Latvia Some are Euro-enthusiastic, others Euro-skeptical, but all are economically neoliberal. The other parties are fanatically pro-Western, but most of all Atlanticist (pro-NATO). they are opposed to the looting of state property and the sale of the economy to Western capital, but on the other hand, they are socially conservative parties. These parties, it must be emphasised are not socialist, but social – i.e. Some of the parties described in propaganda as “pro-Russian” – in fact, those are parties that want equal treatment of all citizens, not just ethnic Latvians, that is, they oppose ethno-nationalism – are economically social. There are many parties (the parliament is divided into about 20 parties), and the main division is the attitude towards Russia and ethnic Russians in Latvia. ![]() The Latvian political scene cannot be simply divided according to ideological lines. In 2017, about 70% of ethnic Russians were citizens. However, after independence none of the ethnic Russians was automatically granted citizenship – they had to pass first an exam in the knowledge of Latvian and Latvian history (insisting on an ideologically anti-communist usage of language, naming the years of the USSR as “occupation”). About 25% of this country is of ethnic Russian origin. Latvia is a small Baltic country (less than 2 million inhabitants), which until 21 August 1991 was part of the USSR. These elections showed how much the war in Ukraine affects the politics of European countries. On 01 October, parliamentary elections were held in Latvia, a post-Soviet country, and on 02 October, parliamentary elections were held in Bulgaria, a former Eastern bloc country – the fourth election in just 18 months.
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