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Cultural Policies in the Baltic States and Slovenia Between 1991 and 2009

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Art and the Challenge of Markets Volume 1

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Abstract

The chapter compares cultural policies of the Baltic states and Slovenia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. First, a brief reflection on the similar but still very different historical and communist legacy has been discussed. Also, the wider context of the overall political changes in Europe, when the Baltic States were restored and Slovenia established its independence, has been marked. The main changes in cultural policy during the transition and between 1991 and 2004, and then since the four countries joined the EU between 2004 and 2009, have been pointed out, including some bitter experiences of neoliberal reality. Discussing divergent paths of Western and Eastern European, the concept of multiple modernities has been used.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As typically presented, modernization refers to socioeconomic (industrialization, urbanization), political (democratization and mass participation), and intellectual (secularization, rise of mass literacy) transformations that began in Western Europe by the late eighteenth century, although their roots include the cumulative impact of key elements in earlier centuries such as the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution (Raun 2009, 39). See also, Eisenstadt (2000), Giddens (1990), and Hoffmann (2003).

  2. 2.

    By 1940, when the Baltic states were incorporated into the Soviet Union, the Soviet official culture had gone through different phases. The avant-garde and iconoclastic proletcult, with slogans of class fight and Cultural Revolution that aimed to destroy the traditional culture of tsarist Russia, was replaced by neoclassicism and socialist realism during the mid-1930s—the era of Stalinist rule. Socialist realism became the Stalinist canon of official culture. (See Hoffmann 2003; Slezkine 1994; Kulbok-Lattik 2014.)

  3. 3.

    With the exception of the cinema and publishing, where, already in the 1980s, the majority of income was earned on the market.

  4. 4.

    For example, a well-thought-out and effective system of preliminary censorship made the postpublishing censorship exceptional and mostly applied against the works printed abroad, especially those published in the mother tongue by Slovene anticommunist emigrants, as pointed out by Gabrič (2008, 230–31).The result was an atmosphere of self-control and a very small number of Slovenian political dissidents.

  5. 5.

    But the current financial crisis specifically revealed several structural weaknesses and imbalances related to productivity, competitiveness, and governance. Persistent macroeconomic imbalances in public finances (growth of the public debt from 47% to more than 80% of the gross domestic product) call for reconsidering not only public expenditure, labor relations and labor costs, state property, market regulation, and the business environment, but also the organization and management of public services provision in fields such as health, education, and culture.

  6. 6.

    In Estonia, the Cultural Endowment of Estonia Act was passed in the Parliament in 1994; in Latvia, the (re)establishment of the institution occurred in 1997; and Lithuania established a targeted program named the Culture and Sport Support Foundation under the administration of the Ministry of Culture in 1998 (Lüüs 2012).

  7. 7.

    Such sectorial development has been backed up with general legal changes in the public sector since the central system of public servants was introduced in Slovenia in spite of the fact that, in the West, the traditional bureaucratic model was already in decline while trying to introduce more flexibility in working relations. Therefore, all musicians, actors, custodians, and the rest of the staff became public servants, with fixed salaries, rigid rules of advancement, and lifelong employment. Since all public institutions preserved the inherited separate legal status, they have been formally independent but highly regulated.

  8. 8.

    Decentralization in the Baltic states has been facilitated by delegating tasks from the central government to the municipalities. In all countries, the municipalities (in Latvia, since 2009, local governments aka counties) are responsible for the maintenance of large networks of cultural institutions (cultural centers, theaters, museums, etc.). This arrangement has also been problematic in times of financial crises (2008–10). When the budgets of the municipalities decreased, local governments reduced significantly the funding for the cultural field. This has also brought out by Baiba Tjarve that, in Latvia, in 2010, municipalities spent 37.4% less on culture, recreation, and religion than in 2008 (CoE-ERICarts 2013).

  9. 9.

    In Slovenia, the harmonization with the Sixth Directive of the EU on VAT was frustrating, as it required the taxation of books (although with the reduced tariff) and the regular level of VAT on audiovisual holders. It is still under permanent public debate, which insists on a zero rate tax for books in all forms.

  10. 10.

    Lithuania: Guidelines for Alternation of the Lithuanian Cultural Policy 2012; Latvia: The Cultural Policy Guidelines “National State” (2006–2015); Estonia: http://www.kultuuripoliitika.ee/

  11. 11.

    In 2011, in Estonia, around 46% of the state cultural budget of €252 million consisted of expenses for professional theaters, museums, libraries, sports schools and centers, and state-run concert organizations. This share of the budget has somewhat increased in comparison with the corresponding figure of 39.7% in 2006 (CoE-ERICarts 2013). In Slovenia, according to the data acquired from the Ministry of Culture, the percentage of the national cultural budget for the public institutions has been increasing over the last three years, from 62% in 2011 to 67% in 2013, which already presents a serious threat for the sustainability of independent cultural production.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Egge Kulbok-Lattik

  2. University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Vesna Čopič

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  1. Egge Kulbok-Lattik
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  2. Vesna Čopič
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Creative and Cultural, Entrepreneurship Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK

    Victoria D. Alexander

  2. University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland

    Samuli Hägg

  3. University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland

    Simo Häyrynen

  4. University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland

    Erkki Sevänen

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Kulbok-Lattik, E., Čopič, V. (2018). Cultural Policies in the Baltic States and Slovenia Between 1991 and 2009. In: Alexander, V., Hägg, S., Häyrynen, S., Sevänen, E. (eds) Art and the Challenge of Markets Volume 1. Sociology of the Arts . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64586-5_7

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