Sharp opposition between revolution as a positively valued and dominant term and restoration as its subordinated complement, loaded with negative meaning, is one of the legacies of the 1789 French ...Revolution. This may be the main reason why social restorations still are neglected in the philosophy of history and historical sociology, although both types of modern revolutions (French 1789 or “bourgeois” and Russian 1917 or “socialist”) did end with restorations. This paper proposes revisions to only attempt at the theory of social restorations (by Austrian American comparativist Robert Kann (1906-1981) to make it applicable to post-communist restorations. They include the distinction between type and token restorations, endurance and performance success of restorations, and a new formulation of the criterion of endurance success.
This paper contributes to the body of research on the monetary variety of nationalism, which conceives of national currency as an essential element of nation state and national identity (‘one nation, ...one money’), exploring its contribution to the successful internal devaluation in the Baltic states during the economic crisis of 2008–2010. Contrary to the predictions of renowned experts in economics and finance, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were able to keep the peg of their national currencies to euro. Because of peculiar features of their histories (a brief period of independence with national currencies allegedly based on a gold standard, interrupted by prolonged Soviet occupation and the despised ‘wooden rouble’) monetary nationalism was very strong in the restored independent Baltic states. Monetary nationalism predisposed their indigenous populations to embrace the neoliberal model of capitalism and to accept the welfare cost of the defence of currency pegging during the crisis. Paradoxically, the success was self‐defeating, as it enabled the Baltic states to join Eurozone, abolishing national currencies. Theorizing about this case study of Baltic monetary nationalism, this paper closes with the interpretation of the rise and demise of national currencies as the reversal of the Weberian disenchantment process. Monetary nationalism (making money a core part of national identity) is a product of this reversal.
A unique application of social science software to generate typology and ranklist of transition models of twenty-nine countries in Europe and Asia, ranging from Estonia to Vietnam, Norkus provides a ...highly innovative internationally comparative causal analysis of the variation in political and economic outcomes after the first decade of post-communist transformations, using multi-value Qualitative Comparative Analysis and Tosmana programme. The analysis includes a critical revision of received dichotomies (e.g. on gradualism versus “shock therapy"), and contributes to current debates on the varieties of post-communist capitalism.
This paper discusses recent quantitative research on defence spending in interwar Lithuania, and provides a comparison between the burden of defence spending in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland ...and Poland in 1924, 1938 and 1939, which are the only years with available data on the total expenditure in Lithuania. Although contemporary mainstream economic science does not consider the military sector as unproductive (it ‘produces’ security services), it still sees it as a burden to the economy, because defence spending decreases private consumption, along with private and public civil investment. Two indicators of this burden are discussed: the share of defence spending in total state spending, and the ratio of defence spending to gross national income (GNI) or gross domestic product (GDP). In recent research on defence spending in interwar Lithuania, only the size and changes in nominal expenditure have so far been measured, without taking into consideration changes in the purchasing power of the litas. The main findings of the application of the second indicator include the fact that among the Baltic countries (including Finland), the Latvian economy was most heavily burdened by defence spending in 1924–1925. On the eve of the Second World War, however, Lithuania became the leader.
Using the demand-side approach we provide new estimates of output per capita for Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in 1913, 1922, 1929, and 1938. Our findings suggest that the levels of real output per ...capita in Estonia and Latvia were much above the all-Russian mean in 1913. In 1938, the output per capita of Estonia and Latvia surpassed the prewar level by up to 20%, but the total output of Latvia did not reach this mark because of population reduction. Structural changes in the interwar Estonian and Latvian economies explain long postwar recovery and modest growth beyond the prewar levels. In 1892–1914, there was export-oriented industrialization of Latvia, resembling the development of Eastern Asian “tigers” in the late twentieth century. By 1914, mainland Latvia was an “entrepôt industrial economy,” created mainly by the foreign direct investments of Western companies that established their subsidiaries there beyond the Russian protective customs wall. After the loss of the Russian market, Latvia and Estonia partially deindustrialized and reagrarized, while the interwar independence period was too short for policies of “Denmarkization” to bring about strong catching-up growth. Therefore, their standing in the international ranking according to output per capita did not improve over the 1913–1938 period. Lithuanian output per capita stagnated until 1929 because of infraction of its economic integrity by the loss of the Vilnius area and difficulties of economic integration of the formerly German Klaipėda (Memel) region, but did grow rapidly in 1930s up to 40% of 1913 level by 1938.
After more than two decades since the exit from Communism, no former communist country has been completely successful in catching up with the technological frontier countries. However, they divide ...into two groups: those which decreased the GDP gap with frontier countries since 1989-1990, and those which failed to do so. One may ask: What were the decisive causal conditions for their progress or failure in convergence? Were they the early implementation of Washington consensus style market reforms; their neighbourhood with advanced affluent countries; peaceful transition; accession to the EU; endowment with natural resources; state sovereignty before postcommunism; or interactions between these factors (or others)? Because of the small N, statistical analysis is not an appropriate tool for testing these hypotheses. Hence this paper uses qualitative comparative analysis to identify four explanatory puzzles of the catching-up growth performance of the postcommunist countries.
Baranova, Jūratė (Ed.) Lithuanian Philosophy: Persons and Ideas. Lithuanian Philosophical Studies, II. Washington: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2000 (Cultural Heritage and ...Contemporary Change. Series IVA. Eastern and Central Europe, Vol. 17. General Editor George F. McLean). XII +314 p.
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