I will start by saying that we are celebrating or marking, whatever, joining the European Union. 20 years. Then it happens that some say that we have never lived as well as now, and others say that everything is bad. What are the positions of historian Gatis Krūmiņš?
I unfortunately have to disappoint all the skeptics. Truly we live as well as ever. If we look at the last 30 years as a period of growth, even from its low point in 1994, the growth rate in Latvia and the Baltics as a whole has been the fastest in the last 30 years. Both faster than 20-30. years, 100 years ago, but also faster than during the occupation period of the USSR. Because yes. I can say yes, no matter how we think. There is another nuance that I want to say. If 100 years ago we were in the first place, we were in the highest rankings by gross domestic product, now we have the bronze, which we are less happy about than in hockey.
At the moment, I understand, the gross domestic product of the last 100 years has been calculated for the first time in the three Baltic countries, but so far there has been talk of two calculations or two versions. One is a study published by Cambridge in 2010, in which Latvia is supposedly in the top 10 in Europe with a very rapidly growing economy before the war. The other version is that of two Lithuanian scientists, who say – an average pace, slightly above the Southern European countries, nothing special. This is how it looks in the graphic – two alternative versions. Where are we based on the research you have done?
Photo: Shot from the program
We’re about in the middle of it all, and I can tell that we look better to others, more in terms of money. But I can say that Norkus and Markevičiute are members of my team.
How have they improved their data?
Yes, we have looked at it a little more conceptually and have also taken into account its international methodologies, and have focused more on the actually produced products and services. Because, yeah, I’d say somewhere in the middle of it all, we are.
Now the main graphic that we see – how the Baltics look like in the last 100 years. What’s new? Because some data has reached us, what do we see here that is new?
Photo: Shot from the program.
So that’s the first thing I started [teikt]if we look visually – the time between the 90s and today – we can see that even with the previous big pothole, the pace of growth is generally faster for us in the whole Baltic.
The second thing I would say, which is a relatively new thing, is that at the moment we have an explanation based not on emotions, but on numbers, for the fact that in the second half of the 1930s, regardless of whether we liked Kārlis Ulmanis or not, Latvia had the fastest growth pace in the Baltics, and in 1939, if we were to add Finland, the difference would really be only about 10%. That’s the other thing.
The third thing, if I had to mention three, is how different there were in the period of the occupation of the USSR. Until the middle of the 1970s, GDP grew relatively fast, really at the level of macro production, and then, starting from 1975, Latvia got stuck and the Baltics as a whole, and that economic cycle was already going down. In Latvia, the highest stage during the occupation period of the USSR was 1986.
So, to all those who say, we created our countries and then everything collapsed, I would say that there was a single economic cycle, starting from 1986 to 1994, in which the supply chains already collapsed in the 1980s the end. It’s just that regaining independence accelerated those processes, we got rid of it faster, but it was a unified process, the USSR was already collapsing, and we cannot in any way blame and put these two things together – the fact that we were left with something worse when we again look how extremely fast we went up after that.
The study of the historical GDP of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia over a period of 100 years runs through the international scientific conference “Society. Technologies. Solutions.”, the live recording of which can be viewed here ▼
Economy before the First World War
Going back to before the war, one question. As we can see, Latvia has shown the best results. Knowing that before gaining independence, Latvia suffered the most, people left, factories in Riga built with the help of Western investments were taken to Russia, how did Latvia manage to be the first?
Yes, we really have to completely agree with that, and it is not just our interpretation, also world scientists, when evaluating the consequences of the First World War, mention in many places that Latvia really suffered the most. The policy of the Russian Empire again, we can say – even at that time, by removing equipment, forcing a large number of people to flee, led us to a very low level, when basically from one of the most industrial and developed areas of the region, we ended up in an absolutely agrarian situation, because it was not already what to produce, and one part of the specialists were confused.
If we look at why, I’d say it’s definitely education. Education and experience, and also international experience. If we also look at the political elite, those people who were in power, it is language knowledge, it is the acquisition of education and work experience in different countries. Those people had such a broad view. That’s one thing.
If I may immediately jump to the 90s, which was extremely critically lacking for our political elite, when we had emerged from the Soviet pit, then we had neither language knowledge, nor experience, nor education. Even though people had PhDs, the understanding of what the market economy was, how it really worked, was at an extremely low level. Incomparably lower than the devastated area [pēc Pirmā pasaules kara]. So I would say that human capital, with all those losses, we were much better off in the 20s, and we were able to do that.
You already mentioned the authoritarian regime of Ulmanis. As we know, in Lithuania such a regime started much earlier, it was already in 1926-1928. the year when [Antans] Smeaton established such a regime there, but there was no good result. Then the last – now the first.
Yes, Lithuania 20-30. years, of course, is in a much more difficult situation. The very economically important area of Vilnius has been annexed by Poland, and Lithuania also basically maintains almost no relations with Poland, which is almost the entire border, due to this conflict. Then there is Germany, with which there is also a conflict situation because of Klaipeda – Memel. Then there is Latvia. But the biggest problem of Lithuania at that time is still education, the people are much less educated.
And there we see these differences, that tens of thousands of people from Lithuania and also from Poland go to Latvia in search of work. If we look at it that way, if we could compare it that way, then Latvia’s 20-30 tractors were Lithuanian and Polish. This cheap labor prevented us from modernizing agriculture to a great extent because it was cheaper to hire labor than to negotiate a tractor. Also, of course, the farms we created were relatively small, but still. There was an alternative. You saw that you can get that Polish agricultural worker and pay him relatively less, so why should you buy a tractor and try to agree with your neighbors about the joint cultivation of the land? Because yes, it is.
It is the paradox that Lithuania is currently in the first place from there.
At this moment?
Yes.
Education for national development
Is there an explanation for this?
Yes, that about the last 30 years is extremely interesting. My explanation, of course, is that Lithuanians are better traders and better communicators. We have tried to produce a lot and talk about production, but if we look at Lithuanian companies, they have gone to international markets more, and we have less.
The second thing – unfortunately, I have to refer to the Soviet legacy that… That 90s part of the reforms, when we didn’t reform the education system, higher education so much and actively, we didn’t go in with new ideas. We created some very small new universities, like Vidzeme University, but the big universities remained largely with the same way of thinking, with the same people, as during the occupation of the USSR. I do not condemn them, that they were bad people, but they were absolutely not suitable for giving new knowledge to a new generation, so that we can build this new Latvia.
Lack of education.
Inadequate education to the real situation.
(..)
One of those indicators is the gross domestic product, as you already said, it is the lowest in the Baltic States, precisely in Latvia, you said that the lack of education is to blame, and therefore something must be done to make us more educated, smarter. At the moment, it is also about the consolidation and merger of universities. Liepāja University joins Riga Technical University, there are other mergers, but we don’t hear anything about Vidzeme University. Why?
Vidzeme University has shown good indicators in science, and it does not qualify for the criteria by which it could be added to any other university. My opinion on this in general is that it is completely wrong. The way it is being done now, and trying to add or make some kind of branches of universities in the regions. This principle is very wrong. The principle should be that we should evaluate Latvia’s long-term development, development centers and what we want to see in them – education, science and all these other things. [Ir nepieciešams] to look at Latvia boldly enough, as the founders of the Latvian state did 100 years ago, with sufficiently big ambitions..
In your opinion, those who implement the reform are not doing it now?
Yes. Well, what are we doing now – we are making a beauty contest. Those [augstskolas], which suddenly have worse results, we are now punishing them for it, uniting them, uniting them, almost closing them down. If this was done 10 years ago, Vidzeme University, which I started to lead, would be the first to be either merged or completely liquidated at that time, because science was three percent of the university’s budget at that time. Now we have more than half and the highest salaries in Latvia for scientific work, and we pay more in state taxes from internationally attracted science money than we receive in science base funding. Because it is a model that could be implemented throughout Latvia and which I believe can be implemented both in Rēzekne and Liepāja. It is that we do not look with ambition because we have extremely few scientists. Scientists are good. If we look at the number of publications per scientist and everything, it’s not like we’re any worse…
Vidzeme university?
No, in Latvia as a whole. And I definitely want to say this – it is extremely important that the number of scientists is critically small, small, so we cannot promote this country’s development and move forward. Because if we look at one [kvadrāt]kilometer, there are 40 times fewer scientists in Latvia than in the Benelux countries, simply because there are more people there. But the second thing is that there are three times more people doing scientific and innovation work compared to active citizens, plus there is more money. Gatis Krūmiņš alone can do a lot of work, but he cannot do the work of 40 scientists. If we look at why we are lagging behind, my explanation is that we have chronically underinvested in science, in development, in the things that make our society smarter and all the industries and everything else.
Now, what we didn’t invest in 90 and after, we get back in these results, unfortunately. This is one of the most realistic explanations.
2024-04-13 11:01:48
#Researcher #Krūmiņš #lag #Baltic #neighbors #invest #education #science
