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DOI: 10.1177/17499755103799632011 5: 423 originally published online 26 January 2011Cultural Sociology

Daina EglitisPost-communist Latvia

Class, Culture, and Consumption: Representations of Stratification in

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Class, Culture, andConsumption:Representationsof Stratification inPost-communist Latvia

Daina EglitisGeorge Washington University, USA

AbstractUsing the country of Latvia as a case study, I argue that socioeconomic classes and class

stratification constituted in the context of post-communist capitalismare simultaneously denied

and distinguished. Class was a central component of discourse in Soviet communism even though

classes in their capitalist incarnation did not exist. With the advent of post-communisms neoliberalcapitalist order and the concurrent rise in stratification, the critical discourse of class has virtually

disappeared from the mainstream. This silence is linked to a widespread rejection of the legacies

of Soviet communism and associated institutions, symbols, and vocabularies. At the same time,

stratified class positions are rendered apparent through the means of consumption. They are

presented not in terms of class, but in terms of distinction, style, and lifestyle. The post-communist

socioeconomic hierarchy is represented through a discourse derived from an uncritical (or anti-

critical) consumer culture, which has produced a new cultural legitimacy for stratification.

Keywordsclass, consumer culture, culture, Latvia, post-communism, stratification

Introduction

Proletarians of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.1

When the proletarians of the world (or at least East and Central Europe) united and cast

off their chains in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the first historical irony was born.

Rather than signaling the end of the struggle against brutal capitalism and the genesis of

Article

Corresponding author:

Daina Eglitis, Department of Sociology, George Washington University, 801 22nd Street, NW, Suite 409,

Washington, DC 20052, USA.

Email: [email protected]

Cultural Sociology

5(3) 423446

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424 Cultural Sociology 5(3)

a new, egalitarian utopia, regional revolutions swept Soviet-style socialism into the dust-

bin of history and ushered in the competitive markets of local and global capitalism. The

second historical irony is this: in the context of post-communist capitalism, a period in

which the Soviet experiment has been replaced by the formation of both conspicuously

privileged economic elites and vast numbers of workers, farmers, and pensioners strug-gling to meet basic needs, class and class relations as categories of public discourse and

analysis have been pushed to the margins. It is significant that in the period of economic

dislocation and stratification that has followed the end of communism, there has been a

circumscribed legitimate vocabulary with which to speak critically about class. 2

Issues of socioeconomic stratification in this region have been examined in the litera-

ture to emerge over the past two decades. A number of works have offered comparative

analyses of the impact of transformation policies and politics on income, mobility, pov-

erty, and inequality (Alam et al., 2005; Braithwaite et al., 2000; Milanovic, 1998).

Researchers have engaged in broad analyses of the degree, roots, and consequences ofsocioeconomic changes in the region (Gerber, 2002; Heyns, 2005; Mikhalev, 2003;

Silverman and Yanowitch, 1997). There has been interest in the nexus between economic

advantage or disadvantage and gender (Einhorn, 1993; Fodor, 2002; Stukuls, 1999), as

well as ethnicity (Bahry, 2002; Emigh and Szelenyi, 2001). Others have highlighted

changing and sometimes contradictory public opinion on issues of social justice and

inequality in post-communism (Kluegel and Mason, 2004; Mason and Kluegel, 2000).

There has been less attention paid to the relationship between post-communist strati-

fication and culture (including consumer culture). On the one hand, issues of consumer

culture, consumption, and commodification as components of post-communism havereceived attention across a spectrum of works (Bach, 2002; Barker, 1999; Humphrey,

2002; Mandel and Humphrey, 2002). Relevant to the present work, for instance, is

Rausings (2002: 127) writing on the social functions of consumption of Western goods

on a former collective farm in Estonia in the early 1990s. She suggests that consumption

. . . of normal, i.e. Western, household products symbolized the collective return of the

village, and the country, to normality, articulating a key feature of the present Estonian

identity. The normality represented by this consumption is relative rather than abso-

lute. That is, it is derived from the juxtaposition of the normal with the abnormal,

which is associated with the Soviet experience. Extending this point beyond the Baltics,Dunn (2004: 64) points out that imagery across the post-Soviet space has iterated power-

ful positive capitalist qualities like modernity, dynamism, and individualism in

contrast to negative socialist qualities like backwardness and stasis. Political parties,

as well as marketers, have drawn on this dichotomy to sell themselves and their products

to voters and consumers.

On the other hand, the nexus between consumer culture, power, and inequality

remains little remarked: analyses that highlight post-communist consumptions function

as a marker of normality (Rausing, 2002) or distinction (Humphrey, 2002) identify ways

that consumer culture and consumption patterns have filled the semantic and social vac-

uum left by the rejection of ideology and practices associated with the communist past.

Importantly, however, there has been a failure to recognize the ways in which culture has

also functioned to obscure differences of power and to legitimate socioeconomic stratifi-

cation in post-communist capitalism.

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Eglitis 425

The concept of culture is broad and may be employed to articulate a spectrum of phe-

nomena and practices. For the purposes of this analysis, I employ the term both broadly

and narrowly. In a general sense, I follow Bourdieu in his consideration of culture as both

a foundation of human engagement with and interaction in the social world and a source

of domination (Swartz, 1997). Culture is not treated here as an autonomous sphere, but,rather, as a space organized in relation to sets of interests which may be, among others,

political, economic, ideological within society.

More narrowly, I focus on consumer culture in the post-communist social environ-

ment. It is important to highlight that consumer culture is not examined here primarily

as a vehicle through which the post-communist masses are affected as consumers. The

power of marketing and the authentic wish of those who suffered through the deficit-

ridden Soviet period to consume all manner of new goods and services are both estab-

lished points. Rather, consumer culture is examined as a vehicle through which the

masses are affected as citizens of a post-communist democratic and capitalist state, aprocess comparable to the effects of the political culture and cultural products that domi-

nated the public sphere in the Soviet period. Importantly for this analysis of post-com-

munism, consumer culture is treated as a source of discourse and status markers which

position groups in a social hierarchy of taste and lifestyle while obscuring power rela-

tions that underlie stratification.

Antonio Gramscis (1971) articulation of the concept of hegemony highlights culture

as a vehicle that compels the masses to consent to their own domination while, at the

same time, securing legitimacy in part through recognition of their interests. Key in

Gramscis work is the power of counter-hegemonies, narratives of challenge and actionin the face of oppression or injustice. This paper demonstrates that counter-hegemonic

narratives are marginalized by both local and global forces which deny legitimacy to

alternatives or critique.

This work endeavors to contribute to sociologys broader conversation on culture,

class, and power (Bourdieu, 1998; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977; Bourdieu and Wacquant,

1992; Crane, 2000; Gramsci, 1971; Katz-Gerro, 2002; Lamont, 1994). In Distinction,

Bourdieu (1984) emphasizes the deep relationship between habitus and taste, and, by

extension, habitus and both the representation of social class location and its reproduc-

tion. In the case at hand, however, the good taste and lifestyle that come to both rep-resent and obscure the post-communist hierarchy of class do not so apparently emerge

from a class habitus, which Bourdieu (1996: 2) defines as generative schemata of clas-

sifications and classifiable practices that function in practice without acceding to explicit

representations and that are the product of the embodiment, in the form of dispositions,

of a differential position in social space. Rather, in the reordering of positions in social

space that occurs in post-communism, discourses of taste are born of a global consumer

culture and their hegemonic power in sanctifying a new hierarchy is deepened by the

marginality of alternatives.

Drawing on a discursive and semiotic analysis, this paper elaborates the thesis that

socioeconomic classes and class stratification constituted in the context of post-commu-

nist capitalism are simultaneously denied and distinguished.3 In arguing this thesis, the

work examines the following questions: Why has class as a discursive and analytical

category virtually disappeared from the public sphere at the same time that the advent of



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competitive capitalism has fostered broad socioeconomic stratification? What have been

the dominant representations of socioeconomic stratification in this context? Why are

these representations sociologically significant?

The paper begins with a discussion of the case and methods used in this research. This

is followed by a consideration of the Soviet paradox of class identified in the introduc-tory paragraph and an elaboration of the point that class was a central component of the

discourse in Soviet communism, though classes in their capitalist incarnation did not

exist. Next, I examine the paradox of class in Latvia, showing why, despite the dramatic

growth of socioeconomic stratification in the period of neoliberal transformation, the

critical discourse of class has virtually disappeared from the mainstream. The subsequent

section offers an analysis of cultural products in the public sphere to show how class was

constructed through political discourse in the Soviet period and how it has been trans-

formed, in part as a reaction to the rejected discourses of that past. I argue that while criti-

cal class discourse is marginal in spite of the rise of socioeconomic inequality, positionsin the socioeconomic hierarchy are made apparent in their relationship to the means of

consumption. Classes in this context are drawn and differentiated using a vocabulary of

taste, lifestyle, and distinction which positions groups in social space while simultane-

ously obscuring structural inequalities. The paper concludes with a discussion of the

significance of this analysis for the region, as well as the sociological study of culture,

power, and inequality.

Case and Method

Latvia is a useful case for the study of socioeconomic stratification and its discursive

representation. First, Latvia has key commonalties with its neighbors, the most signifi-

cant comprising shared processes of democratization and marketization, though the

degree and kind have been mixed in the region (Bohle and Greskovits, 2007). All regional

states experienced economic dislocation and the growth of stratification, as well as a

reduction in social supports in the post-communist period. As Ivanova (2007: 169) points

out, social considerations, in particular, and social policy, in general, did not play a

prominent role in the early transition discourse . . . the rejection of the centrally-planned

economy went along with a rejection of social and welfare policies.At the same time, post-communism in Latvia presents characteristics that diverge from

the more extensively studied cases of Central Europe. Like its Baltic neighbors Estonia

and Lithuania, but unlike former satellite states such as Poland, Hungary, and the Czech

Republic, Latvia was a constituent part of the USSR for half a century. That is, Latvia is

not only apost-communistbut apost-Sovietstate. The history of Soviet occupation, and

the consequent lack of autonomy that affected control of internal migration, language

policy, and the distribution of internal resources and privileges, underpins some of the

regional differences between this case and that of former satellite states. Arguably, the

condition of post-ness carries with it the burden of the past, the rejection of which

becomes a component of social change. In a sense, the Baltics carry a double burden of the

post syndrome, which is manifested in a more acute assertion of distance from the past.

This may be one causal factor behind the Baltic States choice of shock therapy over

gradual marketization and the maintenance of a welfare state. No less importantly, most



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Eglitis 427

citizens responses to the economic hardships of post-communism in the Baltics have not

led to the type of nostalgia recorded in surveys in Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic,

and former East Germany. Rather, as authors Ekman and Linde (2005: 3601) argue

communist nostalgia, communism and communist rule in the Baltic countries are

still intimately associated with lack of independence. This is a significant distinction,not least because local manifestations of neoliberalism have not been subject to contesta-

tion in the mainstream, as they have been in some Central European states (True, 2003).

This paper uses discursive and semiotic analysis to show the transformation of hegem-

onic discourses of class and stratification from Soviet Latvia through the first decades of

post-communist life in Latvia. The analysis is based primarily on a sampling of posters

and billboards from the Soviet and the post-communist periods. Soviet-era political post-

ers are from the collection housed at the Latvian National Library in Riga. I gathered the

contemporary advertising billboard sample during a 10-month stay in Riga, Latvia, in

200708. Having previously analyzed election posters of early post-communist politicalcontests (Eglitis, 2002; Stukuls, 1997), my intention was to collect photographs of the

dominant images occupying the public square in the absence of an election season for the

purpose of inquiring whether they constituted a discernible social discourse (or body of

contesting discourses). I assembled a total of 21 images, a sample of which is included.

All of the images were prominently displayed in at least one location in Riga. Several of

the images also featured in advertising circulars that reached an even wider audience. As

a supplement to the displays in public spaces, I collected advertisements over the same

period from the pages of Latvias two leading daily newspapers,Diena and Neatkariga

rita avize, as well as the popular womens and mens lifestyle magazines Santa,Pastaiga,andKlubs.4

The examination of cultural products in the public sphere offers the opportunity to

identify discernible points of convergence that together can be read as comprising a

hegemonic discourse that positions groups and individuals within a hierarchy of con-

sumption, distinction, and class (Goddard, 1998; Piller, 2001). Writing on the political

posters of the Soviet period, Bonnell (1999: 19) posits that they allow [the reader] to

comprehend the official discourse on power. In the post-communist period, the land-

scape prominently occupied by political posters has been filled with the enticing and

powerful images of consumer culture. In a book on the Czech Republic, True (2003: 116)notes that if we locate [ads] . . . not only within the symbolic system of capitalism, but

also in terms of the socialist order, they take on different meanings. They simultaneously

negate the former socialist order, where identity and community was tied to labor, and

affirm a new order. Like Soviet political posters, contemporary advertisements function

to construct and reproduce a hegemonic discourse of power and its legitimate distribu-

tion across society (Goldman and Papson, 1996).

In reading the images and copy I collected, I focus less on questions of primary dis-

course, or the message about a given commodity or consumption site, and more on

secondary discourse, the messages about the social order that function to construct or

reinforce a normative order and legitimate the distribution of power (OBarr, 1994).

Clearly, any interpretation of political or consumer images is contestable and homogene-

ity of understandings cannot be assumed. At the same time, both political posters and

billboards have been important constituent parts of public space and represent key ways



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that agents of power, whether of the state or market, have sought to exercise their influ-

ence in the public sphere (Bonnell, 1991).

The Soviet Paradox of ClassIn the Soviet period, there were no socioeconomic classes in their capitalist incarnation;

rather, class was an ideological concept that occupied a powerful and prominent place in

public discourse, whether the topic was economics, politics, history, culture, or science.

The juxtaposition of the capitalist class system of the West with its glaring division

between the bourgeois elite and the proletarian masses, and the just, egalitarian order of

Soviet communism was a theme that permeated Soviet political and cultural products,

from speeches and party pronouncements to posters, plays, and poetry. Class was an

ideological instrument that served a range of functions in the service of the Soviet sys-

tem, including the veneration of the proletariat as the builders of a radiant future and thesharp critique of capitalist states, characterized by unemployed workers, victims of tor-

ture, [and] evil capitalists (Bonnell, 1999: 263).

Stratification in Soviet Latvia (and the USSR) stands in sharp contrast to the post-

communist context. On the one hand, it is clear that class in the strict Marxist sense did

not exist in the Soviet Union. Classes as objective socioeconomic relations and positions

could not exist where private ownership of property was absent. On the other hand, this

classless society was characterized by a hierarchy of rank that inverted the status order

that had existed in Latvias bourgeois interwar period. The passage of time, however,

saw the transformation of this theoretical dictatorship of the proletariat into a hierarchyrooted in power conferred by membership in the Communist Party and the nomenklat-

ura, a self-serving bureaucratic elite (Djilas, 1957/1985; Nove, 1983). The equality of

the life conditions of the masses, predicated on socialisms theoretical foundations and

the practical considerations of inefficient state-determined production that rewarded

inputs rather than outputs, formed the other major piece of the social order, though it too

contained internal hierarchies based on ethnicity and class of birth, among others.

In terms of the Soviet-era relationship between position, consumption, and taste, there

is also a contrast to the field of play one encounters in the post-Soviet context. Humphrey

(2002: 45) suggests that the process of acquiring goods in the Soviet period functionedless as consumption than allocation: even though the Soviet consumer formally engaged

in buying went to a shop, decided what to purchase, and paid money for it the ways

people talked about this revealed that at some level they realized that they were at the

receiving end of a state-planned system of distribution. No less importantly, the range

of products was so limited as to enforce an involuntary homogeneity on all consumption

(Humphrey, 2002: 52). Clearly, there was a weak foundation for the development of a

field of struggle around taste, as consumption played out primarily as an iteration of

party privilege (or lack thereof).

Class permeated politics and culture, but forms of capital other than economic were

paramount in establishing privilege. Thus, while class-like formations could be identi-

fied in Soviet-type societies (Eyal et.al., 2000; Konrad and Szelenyi, 1997), the argument

proceeds from the assumption that socioeconomic classes, as they are constituted in capi-

talist societies, were not characteristic of the communist social order, though class was a

ubiquitous component of official discourse.



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Eglitis 429

The Latvian Paradox of Class

Data on income and inequality in Latvia shows a broad divergence in economic fortunes

after the end of communism. The Gini coefficient, a widely used measure of income

distribution, indicates a high degree of inequality in Latvia. For instance, in the periodfrom 1996 to 2006, the Gini coefficient rose from 31 to 39.5 Additional data from Eurostat

shows that the ratio of income of the top quintile of earners to that of the bottom quintile

at the end of this period was 7.9. This was not only the highest inequality of income

statistic in the European Union in 2006, but also the highest recorded in Latvia, having

risen from 5.5 in 2000. A study by the Latvian research firm SKDS (2007) on the con-

sumption habits of the well-off suggests that half of all money income in Latvia has in

recent years been taken by the top quintile of earners. While data on income earnings is

compromised by the persistence of envelope (unreported and untaxed) wages, it is sug-

gestive of a context characterized by substantial economic gaps.While Latvias economy was characterized by dynamic growth through the late 1990s

and the first years of the new millennium, the fruits of this prosperity were not broadly

distributed across the social spectrum. A report published in 2007 by Latvias Strategic

Analysis Commission (2007: 51) noted that, although the average standard of living in

Latvia [has been] rising . . . the gap between various social strata is also growing . . . the

rich are becoming richer, but the poor are becoming poorer. While socioeconomic

stratification has taken shape in Latvia, it has not been accompanied by the development

of a critical discourse of class.

The Classless Society of Post-communist Capitalism

What explains the near disappearance of class and class stratification in the mainstream

discourse of post-communist Latvia? In this section of the paper, I discuss three key

aspects of this discursive classlessness, linking it to the process of normalization that

entailed the purge of institutions, practices, and vocabularies of the Soviet past; the con-

flation of the political left wing with organizations representing ethnic Russian interests;

and the transformation of symbols of capitalisms critique into consumable kitsch.

First, I suggest that the discursive silence on class and stratification is linked to awidespread rejection of the legacies of Soviet communism and associated institutions

and symbols, imposed during the Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940. Latvian society,

like those of many other East European states, was powerfully affected by the perception

that the Soviet system was alien and a diversion from the countrys normal path. The

antipathy toward the Soviet system, including its embrace of socialisms values of equal-

ity and redistributive economic justice,6 was one of the driving forces of the opposition

movement of the 1980s and characteristic of Baltic revolutions based not on visions of

utopia, but ambitions for normality. Capitalist markets were widely embraced and even

those who had little understanding of capitalism in practice could recognize the free

market and consumer-oriented economy as the anti-command economy, representing

post-Soviet (European) normality (Eglitis, 2002; Rausing, 2002).

In this environment, one could argue that the doxa (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992) of

the market as the taken-for-granted economic order was virtually assured even before its

institutionalization. Kolankiewicz (1996: 429) writes of the region that the East and



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Central European revolutions, be they transitions or transformations, negotiated, round

table or velvet transfers of power all have an element ofrestoration, not to astatus quo

antebut to what is often assumed to be a natural path of market-led social development.

Further, Kennedy (1994: 34) points out that

The process of identity formation after communism is ironic. Politicians, activists, and analysts

emphasize the unprecedented fact of communisms end. At the same time . . . its subjects insist

that they want no more experiments they want only what has been proven to succeed. They

want to be normal . . . In short, they want to be something inconsistent with the system that they

recently overturned and the social relations it produced. In this, identity is understood in the

most nonsocial of terms: in natural terms.

Bourdieus (1977: 164) widely known assertion that every established order tends to

producethe naturalization of its own arbitrariness is particularly interesting in a casewhere the social order was, arguably, doxic even before it was an actually existing social

order. However, Latvias adoption of the neoliberal road to Europe did not take place in

a context that was only local: the global discourse of neoliberal economic development

at the end of history (Fukuyama, 2006) also posited an ideology that stood alone on a

historical battlefield strewn with the fallen corpses of alternative ideologies.

The new state rapidly dismantled the institutional and ideological inheritances of the

Soviet period. Latvia, together with its Baltic neighbors, commenced a rapid shift out of

a half-century old command economy. As Bohle and Greskovits (2007: 445) write, in

the Baltic states a reincarnation of economic liberalism as neoliberalism has been pur-sued in a rather radical and uncompromised fashion. The choice of a radical neoliberal

path had practical and symbolic aspects. On the one hand, it meant a rapid reorientation

of the economy away from Russia and toward the West, which would, ostensibly, give

Latvia the opportunity to share in western prosperity. On the other hand, it was part of the

purge of the Soviet legacy.

In considering the broad ambition for normality, there is a danger in overstating

homogeneity of attitudes in society. Public opinion data suggest a wide range of attitudes

on issues like inequality, wealth, and wages: for instance, in the year after Latvia elected

its first neoliberal government, public attitudes were split on whether individuals or the

state should be responsible for provision of basic needs, whether everyone or a few

would benefit from the privatization of big enterprises, and whether entrepreneurship or

dishonesty underpinned new wealth (Rose and Maley, 1994). Data from the International

Social Survey Programme (1999), which focused on attitudes toward inequality, show

that 96 percent of Latvias inhabitants agreed that differences in income were too large

and 78 percent embraced the idea that it was the responsibility of government to reduce

differences in income.

Perspectives on what Patico (2008: 7) calls logics of value, the correspondence of

forms of value like material wealth to social standing, moral legitimacy, and the like,

reflect a degree of ambivalence and, arguably, frustration with the post-communist (mal)distribution of resources. Paticos examination of the middle class in Russia reveals

resistance to a post-Soviet logic of value that de-links professional achievement from

material privileges, positioning nouveux riches well above the educated (and cultured)

professionals like the struggling teachers in her study. Arguably, data on Latvia



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Eglitis 431

are suggestive of some perception of a comparably problematic logic of value in

post-communism.

Alas, the mixed attitudes expressed in these surveys have not been obstacles to the

construction of radical neoliberalism in Latvia. Why should this be the case? Importantly,

the presence of egalitarian (Suhrcke, 2001) attitudes has not been tied in public opinionsurveys (Rose, 2005) to support for the restoration of a socialist economy, as there

appears to be a conflation in the public mind of Soviet-era economics with Soviet-era

authoritarianism, which was roundly rejected (Ekman and Linde, 2005). In addition,

there has been a dearth of mainstream political, social, or media vehicles for translating

ambivalent or resistant attitudes into action, as well as an absence of a critical main-

stream vocabulary for problematizing stratification. Even in a post-Soviet country like

Russia, where neither neoliberalism nor the fundamental rejection of the Soviet past have

been as central to processes of change as in Latvia, Patico (2008: 215) detects a dimin-

ishment of rhetorical resources whereby teachers had managed, just a few years earlier,to produce such biting critiques of economic inequality. Patico focuses her explanation

of this at least in part on a shifting logic of value that puts a greater onus of credit for

success (or blame for failure) on individuals rather than an unjust structure and her analy-

sis points to the idea that critique is enabled or, in these instances, constrained by the

rhetorical resources available in the dominant cultural discourse.

Just as Adorno and Horkheimer (1972) did not take nave acquiescence as a condition

for the success and power of the culture industry, it is not necessary to assume that the

masses are uniformly uncritical of neoliberalism or its stratifying effects. InDialectic of

Enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer (1973: 167) write that the triumph of advertis-ing in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products

even though they may see through them. In post-communist Latvia, arguably, the tri-

umph of neoliberalism is that consent is engineered through powerful global and local

currents that render alternatives illegitimate and critique problematic, even as economic

realities make capitalisms inequalities starkly visible.

In the first post-communist elections in 1993, the 23 parties and electoral coalitions

competing for 100 seats in the Saeima (parliament) embraced varied but circumscribed

policy positions: the small Liberal Alliance spoke for an unfettered market, the popular

Latvias Way embraced the slogan of bravely going down the road of reform, the pro-agricultural Latvian Farmers Union advocated free markets with protectionism, and the

Latvian Social Democratic Workers Party supported the social market. While there

were disagreements about the speed of reforms and the need to maintain a social safety

net, there was no serious debate on the capitalist market as a goal (Eglitis, 2002), laying

the foundation for a period of uninterrupted hegemony for neoliberal ideology (Bohle

and Greskovits, 2007).

Latvian political scientist Juris Rozenvalds, commenting on contemporary politics in

Latvia, points out that a number of our problems, economic among them, are related to

the fact that there has not been a normal swaying . . . between the right and the left. He

adds that Latvia has had no normal left alternative (cited at Lulle, 2008: 2), a point

consistent with the view of economist Gatis Kokins, who noted:

[the] idea has been disseminated that only radical liberalism is valuable in economics, that is,

one pays minimal taxes and each individual lives as he is able. This model, [it is said] is the



12/26


only one that brings rapid growth . . . the realities of the economic realm show that while this

model initially brings growth, in the long term it brings social polarization the successful and

the unsuccessful. (quoted in Orupe, 2008: 32).

Latvian media analyst Anda Rozukalne points out that with the fundamental transfor-mation of everything . . . this [the discussion of class and class relations] was one of the

things cast aside most enthusiastically. The vocabulary of the socioeconomic sphere and

politics revolves around terms such as market economy, business, wealth, and

prestige, and there is discomfort with looking at consequences that have emerged from

the competitive marketplace.7 Notably, she adds, economic marginality has become

associated not with structural problems, but with criminality or deviance8.

A second aspect of the marginality of class in public discourse which is salient in the

Latvian context is the relationship between the Latvian majority and the Russian minor-

ity, many of whom migrated to Latvia during the Soviet period, in the realm of politics.One of the widely discussed social cleavages in Latvia is ethnicity and debates around

this issue have centered on minority access to citizenship and education in Russian

(Jubulis, 2001; Laitin, 1998). In politics, voting behavior has often reflected ethnic group

membership. Interestingly, since the first post-communist elections in 1993, Russian-

dominated parties have been labeled left wing (Eglitis, 2002). Alas, while their

economic orientation has not been radically neoliberal, it has not been anti-market either,

embracing positions largely supportive of a free market with social welfare provisions.

The politics of this left wing have drawn more heavily on ethnic rather than economic

issues and analysis of voter behavior has found that dominant language is a better predic-tor of voter behavior than socioeconomic position (Ikstens, 2005). In contrast to other

countries in the region where left-wing populism has enjoyed some resurgence in the

economic tumult of post-communism (Rueschemeyer, 1999), the association of Russian

parties with a left wing in Latvia has further marginalized political discourse with left

associations among the Latvian majority.

The third and final nail in the coffin of a critical left alternative is its ironic transforma-

tion into consumables, advertising campaigns, and kitsch in the marketplace. In an article

on Soviet symbols in post-Soviet Russia, Sabonis-Chafee (1999: 362) asks the question,

what role does communist kitsch play in contemporary times?. She notes the uses of

symbols of the past in recapturing (without irony) a glorious history, such as victory in the

Great Fatherland War, and selling contemporary products by linking them with the past,

even if there is no authentic connection. What this analysis fails to note is that while the

transformation of communist symbols into consumables may render them embodiments

of memory for those nostalgic for a lost past, it may also strip them of power as a threat to

or critique of capitalism. In the post-communist environment, memories of the past com-

pete with representations of the past that are disconnected from memory. As Ebenshade

(1995: 85) points out in a regional retrospective, memory . . . is uprooted, detached from

life, packaged and sold, whether for hard cash or political points.

The rejection of a vocabulary and critical theoretical perspective associated with asocial order swept out in the revolutionary pursuit of normality has been accompanied by

a cooptation of the symbols of that ideology into consumer culture. For instance, in

October of 2007, the banner in Figure 1 advertised revolutionary prices at an electron-

ics chain in Riga beneath the stark black-on-red representation of Che Guevara.



13/26

Eglitis 433

The transformation of the ideology and history of the Soviet empire more generally is

apparent in the novelty items for sale across Eastern Europe. Shirts bearing the physiog-

nomies of Lenin and Che Guevara or the Cyrillic letters CCCP(Russian for USSR) arenot uncommon. In Latvia, one can enjoy a CCCPice cream bar. In neighboring Lithuania,

a popular grocery item has been Soviet sausage, the market for which has expanded to

include Soviet dumplings and bread. The producer hails these goods as being character-

ized by a resolute search for quality and return to the natural (Klumbyte, 2007: 3).

Figure 1. A poster in the window of an electronics shop in Riga



14/26


Paradoxically, in the anti-Soviet discourse that characterized the Baltic pursuit of nor-

mality, these qualities were not among those associated with the era. Alas, the improved

Soviet experience is available and popular in the marketplace.

The power of anti-capitalist ideology is subjugated to the power of the market in

which these symbols no longer represent a threat to or critique of the victory of globalcapitalism. Consumer culture has emptied powerful political symbols of their content,

transforming them into what Ritzer (2006) has termed nothing: ideologically empty,

uncritical, historically decontextualized consumables.

Vocabularies of Stratification in Post-communist Capitalism

Kolankiewicz (1996: 430) writes:

There must be a question mark over what the emerging status order within which class formationtakes place, and which is formed around a consensus over the valuation of social worth, may

look like. This is particularly so when the former dominant group ornomenklatura possesses

few of the attributes of social esteem which connubium or commensality would donate to the

emerging bourgeoisie and on which they could base their legitimacy. How will the ennoblement

of the new bourgeoisie, to cite Weber, take place?

Kolankiewicz highlights the function played by social capital in the form of networks,

often rooted in the communist period, in fostering the development of a post-communist

bourgeoisie. The question he poses above, however, has remained largely unanswered;

how has the ennoblement of the new bourgeoisie taken place? How have positions ofsocioeconomic privilege been legitimated within the broader stratification structure born

in the wake of Soviet demise?

This section of the paper hypothesizes the character of the discourse of stratifica-

tion in Latvia. It offers an overview of how this discourse distinguishes and denies

class, obscuring social relations of post-communism and legitimating a status order

that denies the social (Bourdieu, 1984: 11) by treating socioeconomic positions as

little more than reflections of taste and style. Writing on the French class structure,

Bourdieu (1984) focuses on the role culture and cultural consumption play in social

reproduction of class and stratification. His work may also be applied in consideringthe role culture plays in obscuring and legitimating stratification where the class

structure is nascent rather than long-standing. The case at hand also raises questions

about Bourdieus assertion of habitus as an organic and primary site for the constitu-

tion of taste and associated position. This work suggests that global consumer culture

and the taste it cultivates may supplant the functions attributed by Bourdieu to habi-

tus, if only at its origins.

In his treatment of the relationship between class, culture, and stratification, Bourdieu

(1984) focused on cultural consumption largely in terms of taste in music, art, and food.

This paper gives greater weight to the construction of an aesthetic of taste in consumerculture. In Bourdieus work, judgment is a social faculty born of upbringing and educa-

tion. In the post-communist space, the socialization and education of most working-age

generations was a product of the Soviet period, in which mass culture was associated

with the aesthetics and opportunities of high culture in the form of plays, concerts,

and books, which were abundant and subsidized. Research on cultural practices



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Eglitis 435

in post-communism (Domanski, 2000) posits that there is a greater store of cultural

capital (as measured by cultural participation) in the hands of those with high occupa-

tional and educational attainment, but this is as likely to be associated with the prohibi-

tive cost of these activities as with aesthetic preferences rooted in class. The focus in this

work, then, is on the production of a new cultural legitimacy for stratification, which isrooted in the taste-making of consumer culture.

Status and Stratification: Icons of Power

In his 1899 book, The Theory of the Leisure Class, Thorstein Veblen writes:

Abstention from labor is not only an honorific or meritorious act, but it presently comes to be a

requisite of decencyAbstention from labor is the convenient evidence of wealth and is

therefore the conventional mark of social standing . . . According to well-established laws ofhuman nature, prescription presently seizes upon this conventional evidence of wealth and

fixes it in mens habits of thought as something that is in itself substantially meritorious and

ennobling; while productive labor at the same time and by a like process becomes in a double

sense intrinsically unworthy. (1899/1957: 289)

The honorific quality of consumption of leisure or goods in contrast to labor is pertinent

to the hierarchy of socioeconomic classes in post-communist Latvia. In the Soviet

period, iconography deployed in the public sphere elevated the heroism of the laborer

with images of industrial and agricultural workers central to Soviet public culture.

Work, it was unequivocally iterated, brought glory and rewards to the country and thelaborer; by contrast, conspicuous leisure was regarded with suspicion. The featured

poster (Figure 2), printed in the 1940s, highlights this point: the overall-clad laborer casts

a disdainful eye on the young woman stretched out with a stack of fashion magazines.

The slogan reads simply: Go to work!

In the post-communist capitalist order, as in the late 19th-century period of conspicu-

ous wealth accumulation in the USA described by Veblen, consumption and leisure,

rather than work, are the touchstones of status and respectability. That is not to say that

most members of the socioeconomic elite do not engage in paid labor. A 2007 study of

Latvias top quintile of earners found that they work an average of 47 hours per week(LKDS).9 However, the representation of self that is honorific is achieved through the

consumption of goods and leisure rather than work. The toiling proletarian of the com-

munist past can no longer trade the capital of humble origins and simple labor for social

recognition. Work is no longer a socially venerated path to status. Clearly, some occupa-

tions in society command more status than others: capital in the form of education and

prestigious social networks can be converted to occupational positions of respect. At the

same time, economic capital commands greater respect, as it can be converted into the

status signals (Lamont, 1994: 63) that render apparent ones socioeconomic position. In

the environment of post-communism, ones educational and class background areunlikely to be key status signals, as they are in western states. Institutions of higher edu-

cation have not (yet) stratified along a socially significant spectrum of prestige and

Latvia is only one generation removed from an era when income and consumption gaps

were comparatively minor. As such, social status is more fully derived from externally

visible status signals acquired in the marketplace.



16/26


The icon of modernity, the consumer, can be juxtaposed with the icon of the Soviet

past, the worker. Figure 3 features several of the most ubiquitous icons of the genre

(Bonnell, 1991, 1999). An apron-clad proletarian holds aloft a hammer, his powerful

arms parallel with those of the female agricultural worker, who carries the companion

sickle. The slogan beneath reads, Long live the union of the worker and the farmer the

strong foundation of Soviet power!. While the poster employs symbolism, it can also beread literally, which was consistent with the Soviet orientation toward mass culture and

rejection of the more abstract pretensions of bourgeois culture.

Posters like these reflected and structured a public narrative that elevated a cult of

labor with its constituent features of heroic efforts and an ethic of self-sacrifice, as

described by this article in a 1948 issue of Latvias leading communist-era newspaper,

Cina: Work the organizational principle of our lives, the creator of our today and our

tomorrow. Only through work can we construct values that will enable our country to

develop in to an unconquerable socialist fortress (cited at Buholcs, 2005: 254). Alas, the

Soviet laborer has been marginalized in terms of symbolic status and quotidian survivaland the consumer is the icon of power and symbol of a new radiant future.

In the opening paragraph of her book on the Soviet iconography of power, Bonnell

(1999: 21) notes that, Every revolution needs its heroes . . . Those who were despised

under the old regime are adulated under the new. Arguably, the revolution which

Figure 2. A poster from the 1940s



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Eglitis 437

ushered in normality also introduced new heroes. If within this category one countsthose who courageously participated in the anti-Soviet opposition, one may highlight

dissidents, progressive members of the cultural elite and ordinary citizens who resisted

oppression. If one counts those who are venerated in the public square, one might be

persuaded that contemporary adulation if not heroism in its conventional sense is

granted to the post-communist European consumer who has crushed beneath the soles of

his stylish new shoes the drab, gray proletarian hero of Soviet society. The proletarian

and collective farmer, outfitted in functional aprons, pants, and dresses, their feet shod in

heavy, practical shoes, are vestiges of the past. As Bourdieu (1984: 556) has argued, the

contrast between sophisticated and vulgar taste is in part structured by distance fromeconomic necessity. Consequently, ostentatiously impractical stiletto-heeled boots or

delicate white gloves are items of distinction in the public square.

It is not only the styles of the past that are rejected. The language of the past is mar-

ginalized as well. Media analyst Anda Rozukalne points out that the iteration of a critical,

left-associated discourse questioning the justice of the distribution of power and privi-

lege would, in this context, be considered impolite or not stylish8.

The socioeconomic stratification that has evolved in post-communism is not voiced

as class, but classes are distinguished and made apparent in the realm of consumption.

A vocabulary of distinction is created in the public sphere, most visibly in the market-place and press.

The cultural carriers of hegemonic discourse appear in many guises. Among the most

popular are consumer magazines, which are read regularly by about half the population.

Writing on the magazine market, Rozukalne (2005: 259) notes that attention to analysis

Figure 3. Posters showing icons of the Soviet past and post-communist consumerism



18/26


of sociopolitical problems is increasingly re-oriented towards knowing how to live

[well], enjoying life, loving oneself, quality leisure, getting in touch with one-

self, having new experiences, etc.. This re-orientation is apparent not only in con-

sumer magazines, but in the hard news marketplace. In a content analysis of Latvias

three leading daily newspapers, Rozukalne (2006: 301), found that themes of lifestyle(dzives stils) took up a growing proportion of space, replacing hard news with items

focused on home dcor, automobiles, care of the body, fine food, and holidays. She notes

that newspapers looked at in the study associate the good life with lifestyle and being

fashionable. So while social researchers in Latvia have examined the penetration of

consumer culture into the public sphere and social value system (Brikse et al., 2006;

Rozukalne, 2005, 2006; Semjonova, 2007), there has been a lack of attention to the ways

in which consumer culture is linked to stratification and its legitimation.

If the vocabulary of consumer lifestyle has been present in the content of newspapers

and magazines, it has been omnipresent in advertising. Figure 4, an advertisement for ashopping center in Riga, featured widely on billboards and in magazines and circulars.

The symbols and discourse it employs are consistent with the process of distinguishing

Figure 4. Advertisement for a shopping center in Riga



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Eglitis 439

class through consumption. The image features two young people dressed in clothing

clearly intended for leisure. Symbols of status surround them: a crystal chandelier; a gold

leather divan; a plush rug. Both models hands are adorned with large rings and the male

is draped in fur. There is a third person, but he is not a member of the leisure class and

his faceless presence is justified only by what he is doing to serve the conspicuous con-sumers. The line at the bottom proclaims the crowning of [good] taste.

Figure 5 appeared outside of Stockmann, a large upscale retailer adjacent to the

Central Market. While the market is likely to be the destination of people with less

means, as sellers in the market offer inexpensive clothing, household goods, and food,

Stockmann would be a more likely destination for those who are well-situated, as it

offers a wide selection of imported foods and stylish clothing and domestic goods. The

banner outside Stockmann confirms its position in taste-making: With style, taste, and

lifestyle.10

In Latvia, one of the consumer items that became a stepping-stone to status after com-munism was the luxury automobile. Luxury cars, including BMW, Audi, and Mercedes,

have been marketed as signifiers of the good life. A large newspaper advertisement for

the Mercedes-Benz C-class, a car which in 2007 cost just under LVL23,000 (the median

monthly wage in Latvia in mid-2007 was LVL406), was published in November of that

year with the tagline, How can you turn any car into a Mercedes-Benz C-Class?. The

advertisement sought to attract buyers with an offer to accept any car for trade-in value

toward the Mercedes-Benz. The last lines of the advertisement are the most compelling

Figure 5. A poster outside Stockmann department store



20/26


in thinking about the obscuring of classes as differentiated income categories: We would

say a car for thoughtful folks. Those who dont need to prove themselves to others.

Those who value good art and music, and also good automobiles. Because they have

learned to distinguish the wheat from the chafe. Respect! The reference to good art and

music recalls Bourdieus (1984: 18) assertion that nothing more clearly affirms onesclass, nothing more clearly classifies, than tastes in music. No less importantly, the

advertisement elevates the notion that acquisition of the classy vehicle is less a matter of

economic capital than cultural capital (in this case knowledge), as the car is offered as a

just reward for those who have learnedto distinguish the wheat from the chafe. Another

example of this idea, which highlights the link between knowingand having, can be read

in the outdoor ad for an upscale shopping center (Figure 6) that states simply, [It is an]

art to live!

The dominance of a discourse of consumer culture in the representation of socio-

economic status and stratification is significant because it obfuscates a deeply unequal

Figure 6. Ad for an upmarket shopping center



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Eglitis 441

distribution of resources and power. As Bourdieu has argued, status may operate to dis-

guise underlying class interests, giving the appearance that particular practices or acqui-

sitions are little more than a matter of good taste. The post-communist system of

stratification has been characterized by the growing concentration of resources in the

hands of a dominant class, but a critical approach to the mal-distribution of capital ishindered by both the marginality of a critical vocabulary of class and stratification and

the dominance of a vocabulary of taste and lifestyle that functions as a hegemonic dis-

course, fostering the misrecognition and legitimation of post-communist stratification.

Conclusion

A central paradox of post-communist transformation is the concurrent development of a

highly stratified social order and the near disappearance of a vocabulary for analysis,

discussion, and critique of this very same phenomenon. While this is only one aspect ofthe larger picture of socioeconomic change, it illuminates a cultural context in which

discussion of the causes and consequences of stratification has become marginalized.

The classical vocabulary of capitalist critique is taboo and, at the same time, the powerful

consumer markets of Latvia and global capitalism offer an alternative vocabulary for

voicing stratification. Within this vocabulary, however, tasteful consumption is elevated

and critique of the resource and power differentials present in the system of capitalist

stratification is obscured. This analysis does not presume uniform consent to the post-

communist socioeconomic order but, rather, highlights the dual problem of a hegemonic

discourse and a marginal vocabulary of critique.This work also seeks to contribute to the sociological dialogue on culture, power, and

inequality. Much of the existing literature in this area has tended to focus on reproduction

rather than origins. While using the conceptual foundations put down by Bourdieu, the

paper highlights the role that culture (in this instance, consumer culture) plays in the

legitimation of inequality where the class structure is nascent rather than long-standing,

pointing to the role of the radical transformation of post-communism in the development

of class condition and the role of culture in the discursive constitution of class position

(Schwartz, 1997: 1501).

Consciousness of class as a relationship to the means of production has been broadlytheorized in Marxism as a basis for social change. By contrast, consciousness of position

in the hierarchy of taste and consumption even a low position may be dynamic, but it

is hardly revolutionary. Modern capitalist economies both old and new provide the

means, via a broad range of means ranging from credit to cheap imitations of status

goods, for non-elite audiences to emulate, a situation that legitimates rather than chal-

lenges structures of domination and further marginalizes class as a basis for social change

in this region or outside of it.

Finally, the case contributes to a fuller understanding of the way that cultural legitima-

tion of stratification is deepened by the marginality of critical discourses: arguably, the

capacity of a discourse of class and taste to deny the social is relative to the availability

of counter-hegemonic discourses. As this case shows, counter-hegemonies can be mar-

ginalized by history, politics, ideology, and global economic currents, all of which are



22/26


pertinent in the Latvian case. The durability of the dominant hegemony examined by this

work may be tested in the climate of economic crisis that commenced in late 2008. Its

triumph or transformation in the country and region remains to be seen.

Notes

1. This phrase represents a popular rendering of the final words of TheCommunist Manifesto:

The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working

men of all countries, unite! (Marx and Engels, 1983: 137).

2. This work focuses on the period up to the end of 2008. In late 2008, Latvia slid into an eco-

nomic recession. Whether and to what extent new and dire economic conditions will transform

public discourse around socioeconomic stratification remains to be seen. Alas, the absence

of a serious mainstream critique of and debate about the economic path Latvia has followed

throughout the post-communist period may be of relevance for explaining the depth of Lat-

vias crisis, which has been one of the most serious in Europe.

3. While there is broad agreement that the USSR and its satellite states were socialist in practice,

their ideological orientation and self-representation were communist. I have opted for the term

post-communist because some of the key processes of the post period, including the adop-

tion of radical neoliberalism, are characterized by a conscious rejection of the ideologies of

Soviet communism, which were widely seen by the indigenous population as a deviation from

Latvias normal development. By contrast, it is not the case that all institutional manifesta-

tions of socialism, such as socialized medicine, have been broadly understood as problematic.

4. I have not included Russian-language lifestyle magazines sold in Latvia in this analysis, but a

paper by Semjonova (2007), which included popular Russian-language womens magazines

Liubliu andLilit, suggests that the narratives of style, lifestyle, and taste discussed in my workare amply present in those publications.

5. The Gini coefficient uses a scale from 0 to 100, with 0 indicating even distribution of income

across the population and 100 indicating full concentration of income.

6. Clearly, these values were not fully realized in practice. However, their proclamation in the

public sphere over decades of communist rule cemented their association with the Soviet period

in a process comparable to Burawoy and Lukacss (1992) description of painting socialism.

7. Political scientist Ivars Ijabs suggests that while politics in the Latvian parliament has main-

tained some outward orientation towards social guarantees, elevating the state as the patriar-

chal guarantor of a minimum standard of existence, the discourse of social equality and justice

has been marginal. Ijabss content analysis of the written record of the 8th parliamentary ses-sion shows that social guarantees appeared in the discussion 43 times, social assistance

27 times, and social justice just 9 times. None of these topics approached the centrality of

investment (199 times), private property and real estate (615 times and 166 times, respec-

tively), private owners (334 times), entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship (187 times and 93

times, respectively), and tax payers (135 times). Data provided to the author by Dr Ijabs.

8. Interview with Anda Rozukalne, 20 May 2008, Riga.

9. This is somewhat less than the average work week: according to a time-use study from 2003,

the average time spent doing paid labor was 56.9 hours (Karnite, 2007).

10. In Latvian, the words gaume and garsa can be translated as taste, however, the former

term is associated with good taste and elegance, as contrasted to the adjective bezgaumigs,which is something lacking taste. The term dzives stils, while not modified by any adjective,

is understood as meaning a tasteful lifestyle. As such, one could either have or not have dzives

stils there is no alternative form.



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Eglitis 443

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Daina Eglitisis Assistant Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at George WashingtonUniversity in Washington, DC. She is the author of the book, Imagining the Nation: History,

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and Societies, and Slavic Review. She recently completed a Fulbright Fellowship in Riga, Latvia.

Cultural Sociology 2011 Eglitis 423 46

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